


the cracks in our reality

by divinemistake



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loki (Marvel)-centric, Loki Redemption (Marvel), Mutual Pining, POV Loki (Marvel), POV Second Person, Plus-Size Reader, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, nameless reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29237985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divinemistake/pseuds/divinemistake
Summary: “If today ends up being the Best Day You’ve Ever Had Since Joining the Avengers—”“Being imprisoned by the Avengers,” he corrects.“—then you have to say one respectful, borderline nice, thing to me every day.”Or, Loki hates the Executive Manager of the Avengers Tower because she’s too loud and too sarcastic and too kind and too soft, especially to him, who really doesn’t deserve it.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Comments: 56
Kudos: 251





	1. Chapter 1

The first time he hears her voice, it is shrill and shrieking and about his brother, so of course he hates it.

“Thor’s here?” Loki hears as they walk down the hallway. When he gambles and glances to his side, Thor’s lips are split with the biggest grin Loki’s seen him wear since they touched down in Midgard. Vacantly, he guesses it’s a fangirl who’s waiting for his brother—how typical.

It’s always like this.

And as they approach the room from which the light is bleeding into the hallway, Thor’s fangirl shouts again, “Why didn’t you tell me? Where the hell is he?”

Thor crosses the threshold into Loki’s new world in three long strides. Unlike his brother, Loki sticks to the shadows, only moving close enough to see what is awaiting him past the corner of the corridor. It’s all one big blur of motion, really, as Thor strides through the Avengers Tower and scoops a young woman off her feet, into his arms, and Loki’s reflex is to curl his lip in sneer. 

He looks away and ignores the girlish giggles, choosing to survey his new surroundings instead. With one wide sweep of the room, he indexes four familiar faces.

Stark, who's watching his brother and the fangirl, shoulders drawn up and tight in defense.

Rogers, America’s Golden Boy, with his biceps bulging from where his arms are crossed.

Banner. He smiles and Loki feels a mixture of fear and guilt swirl viciously inside him.

And Romanoff, who’s staring right at him, her eyes narrowed, a twitch in her index finger. Evidently she’s not forgiven his sins either. Not that it matters—as quickly as she could pull the handgun strapped to her thigh on him, he could vanish in half that.

There’s only one person Loki can’t catalogue, can’t connect her face to a name, and it’s the fangirl Thor is spinning around the room with, her legs swinging wildly in the air.

She shouts his brother’s name jubilantly, the loudest sound in the room, their laughs mingling together like the sweet and spice of mead.

“My lady!” Thor squeezes her to his body in a tight grip once they stop twirling in place, and then she’s kicking her feet until her polished black heels slide off and hit the floor, fists pounding on his shoulder.

Well, a fangirl surely wouldn’t do that.

“Put me down you big puppy man, you obnoxious God, you are _killing_ me—” The woman is wheezing even as she yells, quite dramatically really, and Loki’s sneer starts to turn into a frown. Who is she to talk to the King of Asgard with such disrespect? As much as Loki loves to see Thor ridiculed, her casual relationship with his brother irritates him more than he anticipated.

Thor drops her onto her bare feet with a delicate softness Loki’s never witnessed before, and the woman settles herself, pulling her dress down and brushing imaginary dust from the fabric, and then she turns up to look at his brother and she wears the most gorgeous smile on her face Loki might ever have witnessed.

“Welcome back to Earth,” she quips, her voice much gentler now, and Loki decides right then and there that he doesn’t just hate her voice.

He hates her.

“It’s good to be back, my lady. Have you been well?”

She opens her mouth to speak, but Stark cuts her off immediately.

“Pleasantries later, ” he says, taking a step toward Loki’s direction. “Reindeer Games is lurking in the shadows over there and it’s making me second guess this whole shebang.”

That’s his cue. Loki slinks out from the corridor and into the light of the common room, and all eyes are on him. He basks in the attention like a cat basks in the sun. This is the first time in a long time he's been on Midgard without chains seizing his hands and feet—his mouth is free of a muzzle and he’s going to use it.

“Stark,” he purrs, but his eyes flit around the room, passing over every single Avenger that’s now standing defensively. “Always a pleasure to be in your presence.”

Vaguely, he’s aware of how the woman has taken to Thor’s side, where his brother is sheltering her under his arm, but he doesn’t break Stark’s stare to look at her. What care does he have for one of Thor’s fangirls anyway?

“You brought your brother here?” she asks, and Loki relishes in the hint of fear hiding itself within the confusion in her voice.

“Did they not tell you?” Thor sounds increasingly worried.

“No,” she hisses, “they did not. What the fuck is going on, Tony?”

Rogers moves closer now, and Loki lends his gaze to the way the super soldier’s hand falls upon the woman’s shoulder, swallowing it. She bristles slightly at his touch and it amuses him for a moment. Maybe she dislikes America’s Golden Boy just as much as he does.

“We meant to tell you, sweetheart,” Rogers says, his voice gentle. 

Disgusting. Is she everyone’s fangirl in this cursed tower? 

“It slipped my mind after the mission a few nights ago. I’m sorry we didn’t warn you.”

She shrugs Rogers’ hand off her shoulder, but Thor holds onto her tightly. Loki feels like his eyes will burn out of his head from how long he’s been staring, how rigid his body, how much he wants to be anywhere but here right now.

“Are you serious?” Loki isn’t sure he’s seeing the same woman who was just looking at his brother like he was the sun, what with the way she’s glaring at Stark now. “Was I the last to know about this? Is there a room ready for him? Does the press—oh _god_ , the fucking press doesn’t know about him, do they? Tony, I’m going to have to call a press conference. I’m going to have to rebook all the schedules. Are you shitting me?”

Then, she whirls on him, slipping out from beneath Thor’s arm and marching up to him like he isn’t the crazed man who tried to subjugate New York a few years prior. As if he isn’t a God. As if he couldn’t crush her frail body beneath the nail of his smallest finger.

He doesn’t know whether to be impressed or frightened, so Loki settles for the burning hatred that’s been crawling over his skin since he entered the Tower.

She juts out a hip, places her hand on it, and looks straight up at him. “Do you even want to be here?”

No. Of course not.

But no one ever bothers to ask Loki what he wants, and now this puny Midgardian has done so within the first five minutes of even knowing him, and he doesn’t even know her name but there is so much heat searing through him and he hates her.

She isn’t much, really. She’s small in stature, her head barely grazing his brother’s shoulders, forcing her to crane her neck as she addresses Loki. If she were to kneel at his feet now, she’d be the perfect height for him to take his pleasure. He quickly rips the thought away and throws it to the fire growing in his veins.

But she is curvy, that much is sure. She is much thicker than the slim Midgardian women he’s seen on his journeys here, much softer than the Asgardian warriors who are built with muscle alone. Loki can’t keep staring at her, he can’t. Her eyes are narrowed, but bright in the lighting of the common room. Her lips, painted a brilliant shade of red, are twisted into some sort of puckered frown that makes him wonder how well she’d fare when he played tricks on her.

He scoffs at her, rolling his eyes and looking away, because Norns, what is he supposed to say?

The truth?

“Banner, why don’t you walk Rabbit to her room?” Stark calls, and when Loki looks back at him, they’re locked in another stare. Loki feels a wave of something new, something bordering on shame, something that has him grasping for a scepter not in his hand and eyeing the bright blue beam of light in Stark’s chest. He still remembers what it felt like, that day he invaded New York.

It doesn’t feel good to remember, so like with all things, he pushes it to the back of his mind and replaces it with a smirk.

“What?” The woman—Rabbit, her name, perhaps—turns her glare on Stark once again. “You can’t just drop an Asgardian in the middle of my living room, ruin all my carefully crafted schedules for the next month and a half, and then tell me to go to my room like a child!”

“Run along now, little girl,” Loki mocks, and when she recoils at his words and takes a step back like she’s _shocked_ , the heat that’s been building in his blood is suddenly ice. Her face is different now, brows drawn in anger, and her whole body stiffens and Loki feels like he does when he changes back into his native form.

Until she draws up a finger at him, storming toward him, ire flashing in her eyes with every step she takes, and Loki is alive again. His tongue is sharp, ready to meet her shrill demands, but Thor reaches out and grabs her with one sweep of his arm. She’s tugged back into his brother’s grasp, held closely to the broad expanse of Thor’s chest, and Loki stamps out his rising excitement. His brother ruins everything.

“My lady,” Thor says, “my brother lacks tact around pretty women, but he is harmless, I assure you.”

Loki lets his eyes drag from the top of her head down to the tips of her bare toes, still twisting against the floor as if she’s trying to break away from Thor’s hold, their lacquer catching the shine of the light. She painted them pink. Loki doesn’t think she’s all that pretty—he’s seen better in Midgard alone.

But then she mumbles something under her breath that sounds wickedly similar to “He’ll be harmless once I maim him with my shoe,” and Loki has to swallow back the laugh threatening at his lips.

The woman rips herself out of Thor’s grasp, shoving him away. Comically, Thor pretends as though her strength is enough to move him, feigning a stumble backward. Then, she picks up her heels from where they dropped to the floor and slips them onto her feet, and suddenly Loki could press his nose into the top of her head at this height.

“C’mon then, Bruce.” Without looking, she begins to stride toward the hallway, brushing past Loki. “We’ll let the boys pretend they have their shit under control.”

As she speaks, her eyes cut back to Loki, gaze burning. He isn’t sure a woman has ever looked at him with this much contempt before and gotten away with it. Banner quickly follows her and Loki listens to the rhythmic click of her heels all the way down the corridor until the elevator dings, and then she’s gone for good.

Her scent, floral and clean, clings to his nose for the rest of the night. He hates it.

* * *

“They call it community service here in Midgard!” Thor says, beaming. Loki wants to tear his brother's lips from his face, to burn that smile off his visage.

“You say that as if I should be proud,” Loki snarls back.

His room in the Tower is quaint. It’s more than Stark should offer him, that’s for sure, but Loki guesses it’s only more than a prison cell for the sole reason that it’s connected to Thor’s apartment and they don’t want the brothers to be separated. At the very least, it’s furnished. The bed is soft and big enough to share with a partner. He has a bathroom en suite. A walk-in closet to fill with clothes he doesn’t own.

Loki doesn’t own anything. Not even himself, now that he’s doing this community service on a planet he’s tried to conquer. Community service as a probationary _Avenger_ in the stead of eternal damnation.

Thor only claps him on the back. “‘Tis better than serving a jail sentence, is it not?”

He raises a brow. “As if it isn’t imprisonment itself.”

“You should be thankful, Loki. Stark has been very cooperative with allowing you to stay here as an Avenger—”

“As a prisoner,” he interjects.

“—without threat of cells or cages or even chains.”

“And yet I am not allowed to leave the Tower.”

Thor frowns. “You tried to subjugate New York.”

Loki peruses this for a moment. He could say anything, but would it ever matter? It isn’t as if Thor’s ever understood. He didn’t understand when Loki let go and fell from the Bifrost and he sure didn’t understand when Thanos forced Loki to destroy New York. He never understands.

So instead of saying anything, Loki rolls his eyes, stalks into his room, and slams the door shut. He hopes it’ll make Thor finally leave him alone.

But Thor just stands on the other side of the door, shouting through the wood.

“This is your _chance_ , brother. This is your chance at redemption. Do not let it go lightly, and I beg you, do not screw it up.”

Redemption—what a joke. If Odin taught Loki anything, it was that there was never going to be any redemption for him. He was lost. Irredeemable. A cold monster in the warm skin of an Asgardian. A snake who spoke in tongues, in lies and misery. Loki was nothing more than a puppet who didn’t see how his strings connected him to his master.

Loki waits until he hears Thor stomp away, until he hears the slam of the door across from his own, before he conjures an image of his mother in the palm of his hand.

He doesn’t know how long he spends looking at her, a vision spread against his fingers. The only sign that she isn’t real is the shimmering edges of Loki’s illusion. Once upon a time, when there was so much blood and sweat and tears running into his eyes, he wasn’t able to tell what was real and what was magic. Illusory images are only illusory to those of a sound mind—something Loki hasn’t always been.

Even he, the God of Lies, has a reality that can be broken. A truth that can be muddled by pain and fear until it shows what he wishes, what he would _beg_ , the truth to look like.

A knock at the door almost sends him into a panic, flashes of the monster who haunts his nightmares creating new colors behind the back of his eyes. The illusion of Frigga dissipates into the air. Loki throws himself to his feet, flies from his bed to the door in a handful of steps, anger like a hot knife through the parts of his brain the terror hasn’t yet eaten through.

“Leave me be!” he roars at Thor from this side of the door. His hand twitches to conjure a dagger. If he opened the door, would the Mad Titan be on the other side? No. It’s only Thor. The Mad Titan is dead. 

But Loki never saw him die—how can he be sure he is truly gone?

He cannot. His reality has been bent and broken and shattered a thousand times by the Mad Titan and Loki cannot remember what is real and what is false anymore.

With a dagger in hand, Loki throws the door open, prepared to see anything—Thor, Thanos, the father he slaughtered without a thought—and yet he is still surprised by what he sees standing just outside his room.

The dagger disappears from his white-knuckled grip. The Midgardian woman’s eyes are wide, like moons, the depth of color in her irises the crevices and craters. She takes a step back and Loki sees her hands trembling.

His lips part to apologize. Pride seizes in his chest and he closes his mouth. His breathing is labored, chest heavy with the rise and fall of every tight contracting of his lungs. She’s holding something in her arms. A tray is set beside her on the floor, a few scattered plates of Midgardian food sitting atop it.

The silence between them is deafening.

In a moment all too soon, her eyes narrow into slits and she rolls her shoulders back, straightening her spine and drawing up to her full height. Loki reminds himself that he can crush her. He could kill her with one strike of his boot. She is nothing, and the ice that is making a slow crawl up every disc in his back isn’t guilt, it’s caution.

How dare a mortal as small as she look at him like that? He is the Prince of Asgard, the Rightful King of—

“Fuck you,” she spits, and it’s Loki’s turn to recoil. Instantly, the edges of his vision turn red and he hopes, shamefully, that his eyes are flashing the same dreadful, savage color as a means to scare her into submission.

His nostrils flare with his indignation. “How dare you—” he starts, but she throws whatever she had been holding at his chest and Loki instinctively grabs it. It’s soft against his cold hands.

“I thought you might be hungry,” she hisses, venom dripping from every word. “I thought you might need some extra fucking blankets. Excuse me for being nice, Your _Highness_.”

The way the word rolls off her tongue makes his fingers tighten in the downy fabric she’s given him. He should feel good. In fact, he tips his chin upward to look down upon her from the slope of his nose. But he doesn’t feel good.

“I don’t need anything from you, little girl,” he sneers. “I have no business with you.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, jutting out that damn hip again.

“Actually, you’ll have much more business with me from now on, Your Highness.” With a grace he wasn’t sure she had, she draws up a hand to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, eyes never leaving his. “I’m the Executive Manager of the Avengers Tower. You’ll be seeing much more of me, and unfortunately, I’ll be seeing much more of you.”

Loki scoffs. “A mortal such as yourself could hardly provide me with anything satisfactory.”

He glances, almost imperceptibly, at the dinner tray she’s brought up to him. Loki swallows a lump in his throat.

She shrugs. “Whatever. You can be an asshole if you want. I’ll still do my job whether you like it or not because I’m a professional and I’m damn good at what I do.”

Her eyes flash with something dangerous, and then she’s taken two steps forward and is craning her neck up to look at him, on her tiptoes in an attempt to match his height. Her pointer finger is just below his chin.

It brings him an exhilaration he hasn’t felt in centuries, a thrill trembling through his nerves.

“But if you ever draw a knife on me again, you’ll regret it.”

He laughs, flashing her a predatory grin, but she doesn’t back down.

“I sincerely doubt that,” he says, his tone mocking.

Her lips peel back to reveal a set of pearly teeth, and though her mouth softens, her eyes are as sharp as the blade of his dagger.

“I do the bidding of every Avenger in this tower,” she tells him. “You, included. Every single person in this entire building owes me a favor. I’m not beneath calling on every one of them to knock you down a peg, Your Highness.”

Loki watches as she lowers herself back down, rolling off the balls of her feet. He’s gripping the door frame so hard he can feel the wood giving beneath his fingers. There is something so vexatious about this woman that he can’t discern.

“If you need anything, you can ask FRIDAY to let me know. You can call me Rabbit—it’s what everyone else here calls me, and Tony’s annoyingly programmed the AI to call me that, too. Enjoy your lonesome night, Your Highness.”

She turns on her heel before he has a chance to reply, strutting out of his apartment and disappearing around a corner. He hears the quiet ding of the elevator, just as he did earlier, signaling her departure.

Loki looks down at the tray of food she’s left behind. With one angry breath, a wave of magic bursts forth from his body, sending the plates crashing against the walls of the apartment. Food smears down every surface. Ceramic and glass mingle in shattered pieces. It’s immature. It’s childish. He knows this, but he can’t stop himself. Fury pulses at his fingertips, hot like the burn of ice.

He hates her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading my first ever fanfiction! Updates weekly on Saturday. Come say hi and maybe request some drabbles at @divine-mistake on tumblr!


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re incredible. A life saver. A genuine Mother Teresa. God is a woman.”

You wave him off, draining the last of the tea from your to-go cup.

“You know, if you keep talking like that, you’re just going to fuel my god complex.”

Mike from Accounting grins at this, shuffling the paperwork you handed off to him only moments before. It was sloppily done, the forms filled out in a hurry as soon as the accounting department called you. They were always having problems with the books—half of that was Tony’s outrageous spending, the other half was the neverending damages the Avengers kept ringing up on the metaphorical receipt.

You didn’t even work in finance, but someone had to get the job done, and who better to do it than the Executive Manager of the Tower?

“Well, I don’t know about this god complex, but can I buy you another coffee for your trouble?”

Mike’s cute. He’s slim, brunet, has glasses that sit a little crooked on his nose. You bet he’s just a little kinky in the bedroom. Like, doggy style is his flavor, and maybe a slap or two on the ass in the throes of passion. He’s cute, but he’s not that cute, and it’s not like he’s asking you on a date or anything.

You flash him your Signature Smile. “I really shouldn’t have any more caffeine, but thanks for the offer. You don’t owe me anything.”

Then, you slide off his desk, heels clacking on the ugly tiling that covers the accounting department’s floor. With a shimmy, you adjust your pencil skirt from where it’s ridden up your thighs, hands fluttering down your silk dress shirt to smooth out the nonexistent wrinkles. Then, you twirl around to look back at him.

He leans his elbow on his desk, chin in his palm, as he looks over you. “Next time then.”

You give him a mock salute. “Have a good rest of your day!” Then you’re strutting off toward the elevator, content to head back up to your office and get the rest of your work down.

From behind you, Mike from Accounting shouts, “Thanks again!”

The elevator shuts, already on its way back up.

It’s nothing new, really. The bouncing around, the extra work, the pulling overtime to get someone else’s work done for them when they’re overwhelmed. The hurried finance forms aren’t anything new—and in a month or two, Mike from Accounting will be calling you again, asking for you to redo the forms that someone else fucked up.

It’s what you’re paid to do. Kinda.

By the time the elevator doors are opening to the main floor, you’re already swiping through the schedules for the week on your tablet. A thread of annoyance is tugging at the back of your neck, a twinge of pain in your muscles from being too tense, too stressed. Your feet are already killing you, toes squished in the stylish heels you decided to wear last minute because you swore you’d be cooped up in your office all day reorganizing the schedules and making room for the press conference.

The press conference for stupid Loki Odinson, whose doing his community service as a probationary Avenger. Stupid fucking Tony Stark, who didn’t tell you that Loki Odinson, the God who tried to take over New York, was coming to stay at the Tower. Stupid fucking Steve Rogers, who tried to tell a little white lie about “forgetting” to mention it. Hah! You’d whipped his ass for that last night, giving him _The Look_ until he finally broke and told you the truth—that Tony made him agree to not tell you.

Oh, and you’d put Tony on blast for that, too. The conversation ended with him promising you a day trip to the spa and a shopping spree for all his bullshit, not that you’d be accepting it. You really just liked to watch him sweat.

And stupid fucking Bucky Barnes for still being away on his solo mission.

Okay, but really you’re pissed at Loki because you’d tried to be nice to him and bring him dinner after you noticed he hadn’t eaten, and you brought him some extra blankets because Thor told you about his whole heritage deal and you don’t really know anything about frost giants, but maybe Loki doesn’t like being cold like a frost giant. And the motherfucker had the audacity to pull a knife on you. You’re sure he hates you because you most certainly hate him.

You stop in the middle of the hallway, finger pressed against the screen of your tablet. Everything around you is quiet. The common room is empty and the sanctuary that is your office is only a few more steps away. The light of day spreads through the Tower, spilling out from the floor-to-ceiling windows and making everything warm. You shiver despite it.

You don’t hate Loki Odinson.

He’s an asshole, sure, but from what you’ve heard from Thor, the dude hasn’t had it easy. And you know, somewhere deep down, you should be a little more gentle with him. He’s not the first person to pull a knife on you when you’ve sneaked up on them. You’re used to that.

You should know better than to bark back at a caged animal.

As soon as you enter your office, you kick your heels off underneath your desk and slouch into the comfort of your leather chair. Despite the temperature, your fingers are cold and stiff—they ache slightly when you pick up a pen to sketch out the new schedules. You lean your head back and groan.

Every time you cross-check someone’s schedule with another, you curse Tony’s name. By the time you have three sticky notes on your free hand reminding you of appointments that need to be moved around, you’re calling him unsavory names that don’t make any sense when spoken aloud, but they sure make you feel better.

Natasha comes knocking just as you’re mumbling about Tony’s lifelike resemblance to the stale ends of sliced bread, and when you look up to greet her, your desk is covered in a sea of brightly-colored notes with varying degrees of importance, noted by the multiple—or lack thereof—exclamation points on each.

“Hey,” you greet with a sigh.

She leans over your desk and reaches for your face. You flinch until she rips something off your cheek, the barest hint of a burn as the sticky note you’d somehow lost a few minutes ago pulls your peach fuzz.

“Hey,” she mimics, reading the note. “Looks like I’m not having that photoshoot on the 8th.”

“Don’t get me started!” you whine, snatching the reminder back. Thanks to the sticky notes still attached to your fingers, you don’t get enough traction to yank it back, but Natasha takes pity on you and smacks it onto a free surface.

But it’s enough to make her laugh, and that fact puts a smile back on your face.

“You scheduled the press conference already?” she asks, grabbing one of the plastic chairs Steve made you keep in your office after he came to have lunch with you once and had to stand while chowing down on his salad.

“Of course.” You huff, peeling your fingers free. “Now I’m just dealing with the damages. Mr. I’m-So-Great-I-Can-Do-No-Wrong-Stark needed it scheduled pronto, something about Fury and a compromise and ‘the trust of the citizens.’”

Natasha nods, eyes scanning over some of the reminders. “I didn’t realize schedules were so damn complicated.”

“It’s why they pay me the big bucks,” you joke, hands threading through your hair to pull it away from your face. The gentle tug on your scalp feels soothing. “It’s overly complicated because there’s so many of you, and I have to cross-reference everything to make sure nothing clashes, plus mission scheduling, and all of you have routines that I take into account.”

She whistles, and it flips a switch in your brain.

“I’m not complaining,” you say quickly. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s not even _hard_. I just have to spend the rest of today making some calls to move everything around and then the schedules will be right again. It’s easy.”

“ _Zaika_ ,” she calls gently. Natasha is only ever gentle when the two of you are behind closed doors. “It’s not an easy job. That’s why Tony hired you—you’re the best there is at this stuff.”

You shrug at the red-head. “I’m decent at it.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “You’re the only one who ever goes above and beyond to take care of us, y’know.”

“Well you _should_ be taken care of. You’re always taking care of humanity or doing whatever else you Russian spies do.”

She cracks a grin at that and you can’t help but do the same.

“Damn straight.” As you pull up a list of press contacts to start calling, Natasha looks down at her watch. “It’s past lunchtime and I bet you haven’t eaten yet,” she says with a knowing glance. You have enough decency to pretend like you don’t know what she’s talking about.

“Are you asking me on a date, Nattie?” You bat your eyes at her.

“No way, we’re going dutch.”

“Dutch is a date.”

“ _No_ , it’s not, and if you’re going dutch on your dates you need to tell me who the hell is taking you out because I want to speak to them.”

With a flick of your wrist, you toss a couple of takeout menus across the desk to her. “Chill out. It’s not like I’ve been on a real date in the past—”

The shrill bell tones of your phone interrupt you and your knees clatter painfully into your desk as you jump from the sound. You lunge for where it’s hidden under a thick binder full of finance notes you used earlier, pressing it to your ear immediately.

And once again, you’re lost in the whirlwind of your job.

As the man on the other side rants about some minuscule problem he’s having with an upcoming interview scheduled for Sam Wilson—something about a security issue, and now you’re dreading broaching the topic of changing the date—you vaguely gesture at Natasha to leave. It’s unlikely you’ll be taking a lunch break today.

She gives you the Evil Eye, the look where she purses her lips like an irritated mother and draws her eyebrows together in a way that screams about you being irresponsible. In the end, she stands and starts to head out the door, but not before turning to give you one last disappointed glare.

Natasha points two fingers to her eyes and flicks them in your direction: _I’m watching you_.

Then she’s gone, closing your office door behind you, leaving you to put your phone on speaker so you can massage your aching temples where a headache is beginning to bloom.

* * *

It’s one in the morning and you’re shoveling the boiling hot ramen you just microwaved down your gullet like a starved man, standing in the darkness of the kitchen to hide your shameful dinner when the lights flicker on overhead and suddenly, you’re frozen. Your eyes must be bugging out of your head when you look at whoever just caught you slurping up the remnants of the first meal you’ve had in hours.

And of course, it’s the blond-haired blue-eyed babe of a God who strides in, looking nothing but chipper until he sees you leaned against the counter, dressed only in a frumpy t-shirt and threadbare pajama shorts, feet bare and cold. To top it off, you know there is soup on your chin. You just _know_ it.

“My lady!” he booms and you wince, hoping he doesn’t wake the whole ass tower up with his projection. “Why did you not join us all for dinner earlier? Stark provided pizza!”

You shrug, hiding your face in your bowl of noodles. “I was busy, and even if I wasn’t, you know I’m not a fan of pizza.”

He frowns and it looks so funny on his normally cheery face, almost like it pains him to say what he’s about to say. He takes a step toward you.

“My lady,” he says lowly, “I do not know anything of the sort. Anyone who claims to not love the grand Midgardian pizza is either lying, or they are my enemy.”

You snort. “I don’t like Pop-Tarts either and you know that, too.”

Thor shakes his head, slaps his big hand upon his big chest, and buckles his knees like a dramatic fool. His other hand reaches out for your forearm as if he’s begging for you to save him from whatever untimely death he’s experiencing at your pickiness.

“Treason!” he shouts. “Lying to your king!”

You pull your arm away from him to shove another forkful of ramen into your awaiting mouth.

“Not my king,” you mumble, snickering under your breath. Thor wouldn’t understand that reference even if you tried to explain American politics to him.

When Thor finally decides enough is enough and whatever brought him into the kitchen is more important than annoying you, he passes by you and heads to the pantry. You can hear the crinkling of a foil package before he turns back to face you, and low and behold, there are three packages of Pop-Tarts in his grip.

Like the true king he is, he offers you a pack, giving you the most exaggerated eye roll in history when you shake your head at him.

It’s a comfortable silence that occupies the kitchen while you both chow down. You don’t speak to each other, don’t look at one another, just enjoy the company and the orchestra of chewing and slurping and the gentle sounds of the tower at night. By the time you’ve finished off your bowl, placing it into the sink quietly, Thor’s demolished his snack and is brushing crumbs from his comfy red sweatshirt.

You waggle your fingers at him in a half-hearted wave, but Thor grabs your hand in his own. His palm engulfs yours. You swallow back whatever words seemed to think they could slither out from between your lips as you look at how gently he cradles you.

When you look up at him, his eyes are soft.

“I am sorry,” he says as if you should know what he means.

“For what?”

His gaze turns to the floor, almost ashamed. “For Loki.”

“Oh, _Thor_.” You don’t hesitate to pull your hand away from his in order to wrap your arms around his neck, stretching up on your tiptoes. “You don’t have to be sorry for your brother. He has to apologize for himself. It’s not your fault.”

He had felt terrible when you told him what happened the other night, although you definitely left key parts out of the story you recounted to him. Thor had apologized then, too, even with the absence of the dagger in the story, but you told him you understood what Loki must be feeling right now, that you understood he needed time to warm up. Unwillingly, Thor accepted that you were letting the incident slide, but really, what were you going to do? Get Loki chained up again? Cut off his magic?

Yeah, ‘cause that would totally help him mesh with the cool kids.

After a long moment, you feel Thor’s arms tighten around your waist, hands pressing into the small of your back as he bends to accommodate your height. Or maybe it’s to get closer to you, to press further into you. Like the soft puppy he is, you stroke the back of his head, nails scratching over his scalp lightly.

“He’s better than this,” Thor whispers. “I want him to be better than this.”

You think about all the things you could say, but none of them sound right. The soft-hearted side of you says to tell him that everyone deserves second and third and fourth chances, that he and Loki both have their issues they need to work on if they ever want to work on their relationship. The jaded side of you says that no one gets second chances in this world. Second chances only open the door to a second betrayal—a second chance to be hurt. Chances never bring change.

“He needs time,” you finally say, but you don’t know if you believe your own words. “You both need time to heal.”

It’s not the first time someone’s pulled a knife on you before, and you know better, but you aren’t sure if you know for better or for worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! You guys have been so incredible with your support on JUST the first chapter! I won't leave you hanging. Updates weekly on Saturday. Come say hi and maybe request some drabbles at @divine-mistake on tumblr!


	3. Chapter 3

He makes it almost a week before Thor drags him from his room and forces him to eat a decent dinner. By decent dinner, his brother means a dinner surrounded by the very people he’s threatened to kill, who have threatened to kill him, who hates his presence almost as much as he hates being on Midgard.

Loki isn’t impressed.

But Thor swears he’ll stop being a bother until the press conference coming up next week, something that Loki desperately needs. No matter that the conference is scheduled because of him, Loki would rather stab himself about a thousand times than attend, for a number of reasons.

Number One: He doesn’t want to be an Avenger, especially as part of his imprisonment on Midgard.

Number Two: He doesn’t want to go and stand in front of a crowd of mortals who wish to speak about his invasion of New York, and that is all they are going to talk about. 

Why he shouldn’t be on Midgard—he knows this and wholeheartedly agrees. Why he shouldn’t be an Avenger—he never asked to be one. Why he should stand trial and face the death penalty—

Yes. That’s an interesting thought, is it not?

Number Three: He doesn’t want to see her, that Midgardian woman, the insufferable creature that makes his skin feel alive, trying to detach from his body like the molted carcass of a snake.

And he knows she’s in charge of the press conference.

Loki isn’t sure if attending might be akin to owing her a favor, and if there is one thing he wants to avoid while being chained to this damned Tower, it’s avoiding owing her anything. If he could avoid her completely, he would.

He hates her with a viciousness that makes his hands shake.

So if joining his brother for one godforsaken dinner in the common room will allow him a few extra days of silence, a short peace of mind, then by the Norns, Loki will dress in his robes and follow Thor downstairs to have the quickest meal he’s ever had.

It’s not too bad in the beginning. Thor, dressed in a simple long-sleeved shirt and a pair of denim trousers, Midgardian drab, ribs Loki for still wearing his Asgardian clothes and promises to take him shopping sometime soon. Loki shudders at the thought and resolves to dress in the horrid Midgardian things next time. Thor doesn’t press him about his public appearance next week, doesn’t even make a one-off joke about Loki hiding away in his room, alone. By the time they reach the common space, where the sounds of dishware clinking and a screech of an oven timer fills the floor, Loki is almost sure he’s worried for naught.

And then he sees her, sitting at the breakfast bar on a stool she twists around in, laughing at something.

His brain completely shuts off for a fraction of a second. Perhaps more than that. By the time he blinks back into existence, his lips twist into a frown, countenance cold and stoic. He vaguely feels Thor’s hand clap him on his back, forcing Loki to avert his eyes and focus on surveying the room instead of trying to figure out what bothers him so much about her laughing.

Now, he realizes she’s not the only one in the kitchen. There are a few others sitting in the dining room: Rogers and Stark at arguing about something while Banner is pouring over some documents between bites of the pasta dish everyone seems to be sharing. Romanoff is sitting closest to the bar where the Midgardian woman is, and Loki makes a point not to look at her again.

“My friends!” Thor greets in his usual fashion. He pushes Loki forward and bounds toward the woman, surrounding her with his arms and dropping a kiss to the crown of her hair. He whispers something in her ear that Loki tries very hard not to comprehend. Instead, he passes by the bar to head toward the refrigerator. He needs a glass of water— _now_.

He feels them staring at his back, the very people he’s threatened to kill, who have threatened to kill him, who hates his presence almost as much as he hates being on Midgard, the reason why he never wanted to come down for a decent dinner in the first place.

“So you finally brought Reindeer Games down to socialize with us?” Stark questions his brother, but it makes Loki twitch. He pours himself a glass and leans against the counter, sipping from it, eyeing the menagerie of Avengers at the dining room table. He doesn’t look at the Midgardian woman.

“Steve made pasta,” Romanoff says, ignoring the last comment.

“I thought Loki needed to get out of his room for once!” Thor says, a wide smile on his face. He pats the Midgardian woman on her back and then heads into the kitchen, toward the steaming hot dish that presumably holds the pasta. “Captain Rogers! This smells incredible! But it does not look correct.”

“It’s not spaghetti, Thor,” the Midgardian woman says with a laugh. “It’s bolognese. It’s really good though, you’ll like it.”

For a brief moment, her eyes meet his, and Loki’s brain freezes again.

“Not sure how your brother will feel about it,” she says, but then as quick as she looked at him she looks away, smiling up at Thor again.

Loki clenches his hand into a fist.

“He’ll like it or he can eat something else,” he vaguely hears Rogers mutter under his breath. Loki sneers.

“It’s not as if Midgardian food will compare to anything from Asgard,” he says to no one in particular. It causes Thor to frown, makes Rogers give Stark a piercing look. Loki revels in how easy it is to rile people up in this Tower.

But then the woman shrugs, taking a sip of her drink, not looking at him. “I’m sure it won’t—nothing compares to food from your home. But it’s better than starving, isn’t it, your Highness?”

She looks at him with a smile painted across her lips, but her eyes are icy, stone, stricken. Loki has been alive for centuries and yet he cannot name the feeling that grows in the pit of his stomach.

“Come, brother,” Thor says, breaking the tension. “Let us eat some of Captain Rogers’ Bowl of Nays!”

“ _Bolognese_ ,” she enunciates for him again, so gentle in comparison to the way she speaks to Loki.

“Bolognese,” Thor tries again, grinning from ear to ear as he pronounces it correctly. The Midgardian woman nods, giving him a thumbs up.

By the time Thor steers Loki toward the dining room table—Banner has already left—the conversation has moved on and no one is paying attention to the Gods anymore. Romanoff has joined in the argument with Rogers and Stark, leaving the Midgardian woman to scribble in a thick binder as she eats sitting away from the rest of them.

The bolognese isn’t that bad, but he’d never admit it out loud.

He’s perhaps halfway through his dinner when the sound of a phone ringing stops the conversation he hasn’t been participating in. Everyone turns to look at the Midgardian woman, who drops her fork and answers her cellular device.

She barely gets a word out before a woman’s voice crackles from the other side of the connection, so loud that Loki could have heard it even without his superior hearing. Which means, of course, that everyone at the table can hear it, too.

“ _I’ve never once been told that my cameraman isn’t allowed to take flash photography! Unbelievable. This is so unprofessional of you. I want to speak to your higher ups—whoever put you in charge!_ ”

He sees the flash of embarrassment cross the woman’s face as she holds the phone away from her ear. Then, her visage shifts to something of frustration, something Loki has seen her wear in regards to his person.

“Excuse me,” she says, interrupting whoever is yelling over the phone. “You’re speaking to the Executive Manager of the Avengers Tower. I’m the one who set up this press conference and I’m the one who instituted the policy of no flash photography at this particular conference.”

The conversation drops to a level that Loki is unable to hear, the static of the cellular connection covering the sound of the woman on the other end. He watches, as the others do, how the Midgardian woman’s nose scrunches, her brow furrows, her knee begins to shake, her free hand plays with her pen.

All signs of hidden anxiety.

Then, the woman flips through the binder she was previously writing in, landing on a different page and letting her finger drag over what Loki can see is a list of words. Her lips purse and she turns the page again, searching for something.

“Ma’am, if you continue to disrespect me this way, I will have no issue hanging up on you.” Her words come out strong—much stronger, much more forced than when she’s spoken in anger to Loki. “Now, you’re with Morse Code Media, is that correct?”

Nodding her head as if the caller can see her, the Midgardian woman writes something in the binder.

“Right, well, I have a proposition for you, Mrs. Harper.” She scribbles something else. “If you have a problem with my no-flash-photography rule, then you and your company will be taken off the list. Does that work for you?”

The voice explodes from the phone’s speaker, angry and shrill, but the Midgardian woman doesn’t flinch this time.

“And while we’re at it,” she says, writing again, “I’ll go ahead and take Morse Code Media off every list for any future press events. In fact, I’ll even blacklist your company for you. And I’m sure that when another representative from your company calls to ask why they’ve been blacklisted from every single Avengers event for the next ten years, you’ll be alright with me giving them your name. Is that right, Mrs. Harper?”

It is precisely now that Loki realizes the Midgardian woman isn’t just sharp with him—she is sharp with everyone.

He rather likes that idea.

“That’s my girl,” Stark mutters. He reaches over Rogers to raise a hand to Romanoff, who high-fives him.

After a moment of silence in the common room, with only the low static of a voice over the phone splitting the quiet, the woman stops writing in her binder. Loki watches as her face melts into something else entirely, a hardened look that threatens to reveal something softer underneath.

It was the face she first wore when she looked at him, addressing him, asking him if he wanted to be here. He would recognize that look anywhere.

“Let me explain something to you, Mrs. Harper,” she says, firm and unyielding, but not as loud. “Do you know why, in recent years, we have switched to a no-flash-photography policy for our press conferences?”

She twirls her pen and bounces her knee again.

“Because the Avengers are heroes, but they’re people, too.” Her voice is so soft now. “They may be heroes to the public but at home, they are people who have seen too much. The Avengers are the ones who keep us all safe, and in order to do that, do you know the horror they’ve seen? Much more than you or I will ever see in our normal, ordinary lives, Mrs. Harper.

“Flash photography can trigger unpleasant images, memories, or other reactions from these people who are already on stage in front of a crowd of fifty reporters who are all waiting to capture their heroes in a permanent medium. If you have flash photography going off, and one of the Avengers has a reaction, you’re going to catch that reaction in something that lasts forever. And media studios don’t throw things like that away—they keep them and make a profit off of it.

“We don’t allow flash photography at these events anymore because these heroes are people and they deserve to be comfortable, even at press conferences. They are saving our lives. It’s the least we can do to take care of them. To thank them.”

Loki swallows hard. His fingers tighten around his fork. The bolognese on his plate has gone ice cold.

The Midgardian scratches something out then writes something down. “I’m glad you and I have come to an understanding, Mrs. Harper. I don’t want to blacklist your company at all. As long as we have an agreement that your photographer will not be using flash equipment, I think we can make this work. Is that alright with you?”

The Midgardian woman smiles, and though it’s small and soft and she’s looking down at her binder, Loki thinks, for the first time, that she is more pretty than he might’ve thought before.

“Great. Thank you for calling, Mrs. Harper. I’ll be there to greet you at the press conference personally. Have a nice night.”

Then she hangs up, releases a breath, and closes her binder. When she looks over, she startles instantly, most likely at the realization that everyone has been watching her in silence for the past few minutes. Loki wonders how her face changes so easily—from content, to laughing, to anxious, to angry. Now, to shocked.

It’s Rogers, ultimately, who speaks first. “How do you do it, Rabbit?” He shakes his head.

The Midgardian woman lets her head fall to the side, confused. “Do what? Deal with people?” She laughs but it’s short, not drawn out like before. “I get paid to do that.”

“No,” Rogers says. “I mean, how are you still so nice to people after they treat you like that?”

“You heard that?” She frowns.

“We all did, angel,” Stark chimes in. “You handled yourself well. Loved the attitude.”

She rolls her eyes. “It wasn’t a big deal. She just didn’t understand why I take the no-flash policy so seriously.”

“She disrespected you,” Rogers stresses.

“Yeah,” Romanoff says. “And then she guilted you and you took the bait.”

The Midgardian woman shakes her head, then opens her binder again to look through the pages.

“It’s not that simple,” she says. “People get mad when they don’t like things because they’re worried about something. She was mad because I changed the rules, so her idea of normal suddenly became wrong, and that scared her. And I’m sure she was being pressured by her boss, too.”

“But she took it out on you. You didn’t have to be nice to her,” Romanoff says.

“I didn’t,” she agrees. “But sometimes, it’s worth it to reach out and help people instead. She didn’t know why the policy exists, and now she does. Maybe she’ll tell other people, and then more people will understand that you guys are people first, heroes second. You deserve kindness.”

Romanoff stares at her until the woman is forced to look back.

“You deserve kindness too, _Zaika_.”

She tucks her chin close to her chest, her smile morphing into something small and perhaps a little sad.

“I do,” she says, “but sometimes you only get kindness if you extend it first. It’s like letting a biting dog sniff your hand. If you show people that you’re safe, that you aren’t going to hurt them, sometimes they’ll realize that they only bit you out of fear.”

The Midgardian woman tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear and looks up, her eyes meeting Loki’s from across the room. He sucks in a breath.

“And all anger stems from fear,” she says quietly.

Suddenly, something visceral is rising up within him, something hot blooming in his chest at her look. She’s looking at him with such sadness, such pity. Loki wants to grab her by the hair and force her to her knees, force her to submit, force her to look at him with _anything_ other than the damned pity that is swimming in her eyes under the dim lights of the kitchen.

He hates her. He hates how her face changes so easily, how her eyes are so expressive, how she talks as though she is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the one true god of Midgard. Like she is better than him.

The fork snaps in his grasp, metal clattering against the ceramic dishware. He’s aware of people looking at him now, but he’s locked in a stare with this insufferable mortal woman that ignites the blaze searing through his limbs.

“You Midgardians—” he spits like fire and brimstone “—are weaker than I thought previously if you so inanely believe that kindness begets kindness.” His vision now has gone black, the wheels of his mind turning uselessly. He doesn’t understand this loss of control. “Your gross display of submission only proves how worthless you truly are, little girl.”

 _You’re angry_ , something in the back of his head tells him.

 _It’s fear_ , something else says.

She is right, he thinks, but by now the damage is done and her face has gone completely blank—he’s never seen her look so empty.

Suddenly, Romanoff stands from the table so quickly her chair screeches across the tiles. Out of the corner of his eye, Thor looks horrified.

“Listen here, you little—” Romanoff starts, but she’s cut off instantly.

“Nat,” the Midgardian calls, slipping down from her perch at the breakfast bar. Her feet are bare again, he notices, toes still polished pink. “Just leave it.”

Romanoff turns to stare at her, incredulous. “ _Zaika_ ,” she says, but the woman shakes her head.

“It’s fine, Nat, really.” The woman places her empty dish in the sink, her face still devoid of emotion.

Loki hates that. Why is her countenance so blank when she is usually so emotive? Why doesn’t she look at him with anger, with hate, with anything?

She turns, waving a hand at the table. “I’m going to bed, got a long day tomorrow. Night, guys.” Then, she gives him one last glance. “Good night, your Highness.”

Loki watches her go, her binder pressed close to her chest, the room in complete silence, and all he can think about is how much he regrets his own words. All he can think about is how much he’s always regretting his words now, when he’s around her, and how much he fails at apologizing to people.

He hates that he came to dinner. He hates that she was there. He hates that he watched how her face metamorphosed so easily, like the gentle flutterings of a new butterfly, wings still damp, and he hates how his inability to curb his tongue resulted in erasing that completely.

But most of all, Loki hates her.

And he hates himself, too.

* * *

The leather of his armor, shades of black and green, is heavy on his body where once it felt like a part of him. Under the changing sunlight flooding through the tinted glass windows of the car, the gold he wears flashes brilliantly. He blinks, staring down at plates of metal covering his body. It’s different than his old set—the armor he wore when he stormed New York. He decided not to wear his helmet, either, taking a page from Thor’s book and keeping the look casual.

The mortals think he’s dangerous enough, even when he stands next to his warmongering brother.

Thor, who leans against the car door on the other side of the leather seat, looks over at him. They hold each other’s gaze for a moment before turning away once again.

“Feels like the olden days,” Thor says cryptically, but Loki knows what he means.

“Indeed, it does,” he replies, breathing deeply.

The heavy beating of his heart, the excitement and tension coiling like a viper in his stomach, the armor warm against his skin. His stiff hand flexes as if it's forgotten the weight of his daggers and yearns to be reminded.

It’s the calm before battle—the anxiety before the storm.

Loki is nervous. He hopes it isn’t apparent, but he strains to keep his body under his control. It would be an embarrassment worthy of death if he showed his fear, flinching, yielding, shaking, twitching, trembling.

But underneath it all, there is something else.

It’ll be the first day that he sees her, the Midgardian woman, since the day he left the wreckage of an apocalypse in his wake as he yelled and belittled her, right after she was belittled by someone else about her talents in her work. He never apologized. He wasn’t given the chance, and even if he had been, Loki somehow guesses he wouldn’t have apologized anyway.

If there is anything Loki Odinson, God of Mischief, is poor at, it’s sincere apologies.

His hand, where it lay upon his knee, legs spread wide in the backseat of the chauffeured car, itch to dance. The nervousness he feels—both from the press conference they are driving toward and the threat of seeing her again—races through his veins. He obeys it and smooths his fingers through his hair, which falls in gentle, soft, shiny curls against his shoulders.

“We’re almost there,” Thor says, interrupting his descent into anxiety briefly before sending him spiraling down again.

“Oh good,” he says instinctively. “I cannot wait to bare myself in front of these witless mortals while they prosecute me on live television.”

“Loki.” Thor’s voice is a warning. “Rabbit will not allow that to happen.”

He scoffs at this. “Right.”

Beside him, his brother raises a brow. “Do you doubt my friend?”

“She’s like the rest of those imbeciles.” Loki brushes his brother off with a flick of a hand. “She hates me, and that is perfectly fine with me. She is insufferable to be around.”

And her hating him means she won’t care when they inevitably use him as a scapegoat for all the trouble the Avengers have had in recent. She’ll let Stark jeer at him, let the reporters ask about New York, let the crowd swallow him up in reminders of all the mistakes he has made and once he’s drowning, they’ll say it's proof he’s evil.

Loki makes an effort not to look at his brother’s deepening frown but he catches it from the edge of his vision.

“Lady Rabbit is one of my greatest friends on Midgard,” Thor tells him and Loki pretends to ignore him. “I truly believe the two of you would get along if you would not be so difficult.”

“Difficult?” Loki snaps, head turning to meet Thor’s eyes.

“I just mean that you are hardened,” Thor quickly amends. “You are distrustful of people.”

“I wonder why,” he snarls in reply, shifting in his seat to face toward the window completely. “Perhaps it’s that my life has been built on a lie.”

Thor doesn’t say anything to that, and for this brief reprieve, Loki is grateful. It’s not as if his brother could understand. Loki doesn’t know why he has to constantly remind himself of this, as if he’s making excuses for Thor over and over. But Thor will never understand, and Loki doesn’t think it’s his job to explain it to him. Thor is a God, he’s a king, he’s in all these positions of power and status—he’s smart enough to figure out why Loki has a chip on his shoulder.

“Rabbit will not let them vilify you, brother,” Thor says with finality in his tone.

Loki thinks the silence is better than anything else.

* * *

“You’ll be standing next to Thor, so walk in with him, and you two will be upstage on Tony’s left. You won’t have to say anything at all, just stand up straight and look pretty.”

She’s not even looking at him as she speaks, but her hand is gesturing wildly at him as her eyes are focused on a clipboard she has propped up against her ribcage.

“Is that a compliment, little girl?” he goads, a charmed smile curling on his lips before he can stop it.

But the Midgardian woman ignores him completely, moving toward Stark and writing on her clipboard.

He deserved that.

Somehow, today she looks different. More professional, perhaps, for the press conference. Unlike the normally bright, colorful, patterned clothes she wears on a daily basis, today she is dressed in a demure gray gown that outlines her curves. A thin black belt with a gold-plated buckle cinches the small of her waist and his eye cannot help but fall on the way it accentuates her body.

And she is wearing heels again, black little pumps that bring her up to his chin, whereas normally she is much smaller in stature. He wonders if it makes her feel more powerful to level the playing field—though Loki would argue she doesn’t need much to make her any more fierce.

He hates that about her.

But he doesn’t have much more time to think about it, or to think about why he’s stared at her for so long, because she begins to wave them forward and her small hand falls upon his shoulder blade and guides him forward to follow Thor and he doesn’t have time to snap at her for touching him.

Her hand is warm, he can feel, even through the leather of his armor.

Then, it begins. As they enter the conference room, Loki holds his head high and rolls his shoulders back, nearly matching Thor’s height as they march up the stage and position themselves where the Midgardian woman said they would be. He hears the snap of cameras, but just as she promised, there are no flashes of light following them.

His face neutral, Loki regards the crowd of mortals before him as Stark takes his place behind the podium. Off to the side, not on stage, stands the Midgardian whose eyes roam over the throng of press. Her clipboard has disappeared and she clasps her hands in front of her body instead.

Stark begins talking, but Loki doesn’t care to listen. He knows what Stark is saying—the script had been left outside his door the previous night from whom he guesses to be the Midgardian. It’s the questions he’s truly worried about, the ones he’s not allowed to answer for himself. Thor told him that the press would ask questions about Loki’s invasion and his probationary period. They would ask about his imprisonment. They would ask about Asgard.

He could handle most things. He knew he could handle this, too. The minuscule quake of his hands would go unnoticed.

But the guilt would return in the night, just as it had all nights previously, and Loki would stare at the ceiling, awake and ashamed, and then he would take it out on everyone around him. Loki would take it out on her again because she pitied him, and he hated that.

He hated her.

Locked in this specific thought, that is when it happens. Suddenly, a flash of light whitens his vision and Loki blinks in surprise and he is no longer in the room, surrounded by his brother and the Avengers, and he’s instead surrounded by darkness and an incandescent heat that has no beginning and no ending.

It’s so hot here. It’s so hot there is no sweat that pours from his body. His body has become liquid. He has melted. He is melting. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. It’s just white-hot, searing, everything is fire, everything is pain. Loki wants to open his mouth until his jaw rips apart and scream, but his bones are soldered together and he’s too weak to break them.

His vision is black and they are not melting him. They are evaporating him, his native glacier skin, his entire being.

And when he blinks again, the first thing he sees is Rabbit, who's stumbling back from the crowd and being caught by Rogers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And BIG THANK YOU for 100 followers already! I’m still taking fic requests at this moment 🥰 Updates weekly on Saturday. Come say hi and request some drabbles at @divine-mistake on tumblr!


	4. Chapter 4

The flash is blinding, white, but all you see is Loki, who blinks rapidly, and then you see red.

You shove through the crowd in search of the photographer who immediately lowers his equipment as if he could hide the fact that he just broke one of the most important policies of this press conference. But you see him. He can’t hide from you. The crowd, those who are smart enough to, part to allow you through.

Within seconds, the photographer is in front of you and you grab his elbow, trying to snatch him out of the crowd. You realize in an instant that you really need to start going to the gym and lifting because he doesn’t budge, choosing instead to glare down at you. Then, his elbow is lodged deep in your ribs, the air forced out of you, and you’re stumbling away from him.

Strong arms catch you before you fall, thank god, and then Steve is reaching out and yanking the photographer out of the sea of faces. His free arm is wound tight around your waist, nearly dragging you along as he escorts the paparazzo out of the conference room.

You feel the stares, like hot irons, on your back as Captain America sweeps you outside, the heavy doors swinging shut behind you with a loud _bang_.

He doesn’t let go of you as he tosses the photographer into the lobby, only holding you closer to his side. Until you start squirming, and then Steve looks down at you as if he’s just realized his arm’s still around you, and he releases you with a sheepish smile. Which immediately melts away when he glares at the paparazzo with his Captain America’s Mad At You glare.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” you hiss, straightening the hem of your dress that’s ridden up your stocking-clad legs from Steve’s hold. “Who do you work for?” 

The mousy-haired man holds up his hands in surrender, his eyes wide.

“I didn’t know,” he stammers, but you bark out a laugh, the sound cold and harsh. There’s no way he didn’t know—every single email, phone call, and video conference about this event has ended with a reminder that no flash photography was allowed.

“Who do you work for?” you repeat, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Morse Code Media, but I swear, I didn’t know.”

“Bullshit,” you shout, nails digging into the soft skin of your arms as your hands clench in anger. “I talked to a representative from your company a few nights ago so I _know_ for a fact you knew about the rule.”

You pointed toward the doors of the building, eyes narrowed into thin slits.

“Get the fuck out. I’ll be calling the head of Morse Code as soon as this conference is over.”

The photographer starts to retort, but Steve takes a heavy step forward. If his sheer size wasn’t so menacing, the stony face he’s pulling would make a grown man piss himself alone. You don’t know how the paparazzo isn’t running out of the place as fast as he can.

How could this happen? You don’t know who to be angry at—the man who’s power walking out of the building or yourself for letting it happen. Really, you should’ve known better. You should have asked security to check everyone’s equipment. You could have even done it yourself.

But more than anything, you’re pissed because you gave Morse Code Media a second chance and they proved everyone right. They duped you and you weren’t the one who had to pay for it. Your mistake didn’t cost you anything but a little pride and credibility.

Loki suffered for your bad judgment.

And _fuck_ , you needed to go back into the conference and make sure everything was still running smoothly, but _god_ you really didn’t want to go in there and have everyone look at you, and you can feel your cheeks are red and hot, with anger and embarrassment, and the press is going to see you flustered, and you were always taught that the press seeing you at your worst is—

“You okay?”

Steve’s hand falls onto your shoulder and you flinch violently. He immediately steps back, eyes a little panicked, but you force yourself to relax. You nod at him, wiping the thin sheen of sweat from your brow.

“Yeah,” you tell him. “I’m okay. Thank you.”

When you look up at him to give him your Signature Smile, his eyes are blue, but not like the blue you’re so fond of. The blue that you wish you were looking into right now, the one that makes you feel like you’re safe, always safe, forever safe.

Steve walks you back into the conference room and you find yourself wishing it was Bucky whose arm your hand was wrapped around, because then you might feel safer than you do right here, right now.

* * *

“Well, that wasn’t as terrible as it could’ve been,” you say, fingers pressing against your temples. Tony pats your back, guiding you toward the refreshments table in the lobby, but your stomach is still rolling with anxiety.

“What do you mean? I did great,” Tony says, a swagger in his step. “Oh, and you were great too, angel.”

You roll your eyes. “Thanks.”

“Cheer up, my lady!” Thor swings a giant arm around you, crushing you into his side. “The conference was wonderful! I am certain that Midgard will embrace my brother in time!”

You wince. There’s still a twinge in your side where the paparazzo elbowed you and you’re almost sure it’s going to bruise if it hasn’t already. You push Thor off of you, groaning.

“It’s not about that,” you stress. “I’m more concerned about the fact that the damned photographer from Morse Code fucking ignored the strict policy I put in place.” You slump, your shoulders drawing up. Natasha’s hand dances along your back in an attempt to comfort you.

She looks at you, her eyes gentle, and then she says, “I told you so.”

_Fuck you, Natasha_. You groan again, stomping a heel on the tile, shooting her the strongest glare you can muster right now. Nat might be your best friend, but god, sometimes she’s evil. And she’s so haughty. And she was _right_ and you can’t stand it.

But your feelings aren’t really important right now. You turn to Loki, who looks bored and irritated as always, and you swallow back the anxiety in your throat.

“I’m sorry,” you say to him, and when his icy eyes snap to you, a chill travels down your spine. “I made a bad call by letting them come to the press conference anyway. It was a mistake and I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

Despite the cacophonous chatter that fills the lobby of the conference hall, everything is drowned out as Loki stares at you, his brows drawn together and a frown on his face. It’s not his usual scowl. It’s different in a way you can’t really name, but you know it is. Almost like he’s upset, rather than angry.

But he’s always angry at you, so that must not be true.

You think he’s about to say something—and you hope to a god you don’t pray to that he isn’t furious at you—when a familiar face suddenly pushes through the circle of Avengers that surrounds you and a searing pain rips through your skin.

It happens quick, in a snap, in a second, and there’s boiling hot coffee all down the front of your dress, burning. It drips from down your legs and into your heels, and you’re peeling the fabric as far away from your body as you can and kicking your heels off to press your bare feet to the cold tile beneath you.

“Fucking bitch!” It’s the photographer from earlier, and both Steve and Thor are carting him away. Faintly, you realize someone’s punched him in the mouth, evident by the blood trickling from his lips, and for a second you’re glad about it. Another second and you’re back to hissing in pain.

When you look up, Loki’s eyes are wide, staring at you, and then Natasha is dragging you toward the bathroom.

As soon as you’re through the door, the fresh scent of lemon cleaning supplies assaulting you, Natasha starts unzipping your dress and for a brief moment, you’re panicked at the thought of getting naked in a public restroom, but she’s already peeling the wet clothing from your body. You look down to step out of the dress and curse as you see the dark color of coffee staining your thigh highs. While Natasha takes your dress and puts it under the sink, you roll the thin stockings off and toss them in the garbage, leaving you in a silky bra and a thong in the middle of the ladies room, shivering.

In the mirror, among the rolling hills and deep valleys of your curves, there’s a very red, very angry mark of a burn starting from the bottom of your sternum and traveling past the lacy hem of your underwear like a splash of watercolor paints. You stare at it, bringing a hand up to glide the pad of your finger over one of the brighter areas. It stings and you hiss, which catches Natasha’s attention.

“Here,” she says, throwing you a water bottle you didn’t realize she had. It’s still cold— from the refreshments table. Did she grab it on the way in? “Pour that over the burn.”

“No way,” you say. “I don’t have anything to change into.”

An exasperated look crosses her face and she gestures to where your dress lays in the sink, completely saturated with water as she works the coffee out.

“It’s not like you can wear this,” she points out. “Just take off your underwear. Stop being difficult. I’ll get you a change of clothes.”

She leaves no room for any argument. With a grumble, you unhook your bra and lay it gently on the bathroom counter, then shimmy out of your panties. This isn’t the first time you’ve been naked, or some variation of it, in front of Nat, but every single time the intrusive voice in your head tells you to stand next to a woman like her and compare bodies.

On a good day, you tell it to shut up. On a day like today, you think about it long enough that it forces you to look away from the mirror.

You crack the water bottle open but hesitate. It’s going to be so fucking cold. Is it even worth it? I mean, the burn is there, and cold water isn’t going to magically make it better, so why even bother? 

Natasha shoots you a glare over her shoulder. You take a deep breath, making sure to roll your eyes.

The cool water is both a blessing and a curse as it pours down your body. At first, it feels as though someone is dragging their nails down your fragile skin, tearing your cells apart. And then it’s gentle, soothing fingertips following in the tracks left behind, washing away the pain. It doesn’t last long enough and the sound of water splashing against the tile wakes you from the feeling.

You’re dripping wet now, and still naked, and Natasha pulls a stack of brown paper towels from the dispenser and passes them to you. As you begin to pat yourself dry, shuddering from the cold, artificial air being pumped in through the vents, Natasha busies herself with wringing out your dress. She drapes it across the counter, away from your ruined underwear, and turns to you.

Man, you really wish you weren’t naked right now.

“Are you okay, _Zaika_?” Her eyes are concerned, but you laugh.

“I’ve had worse,” you joke, tossing wet paper towels into the trash. “Can you get me a change of clothes though? I can wait here until then.”

“Yeah, I think Thor has his gym bag with him, he was complaining about wearing his armor all day.”

“No!” you shout, reaching out to grab her arm before she leaves. “Just—Can’t you go back to the Tower really quick?”

“It’s a twenty minute drive there and back. Thor isn’t going to care.”

No, he’s not going to care. In fact, he’ll probably be overjoyed that he can assist you, but that’s not what’s bothering you.

What’s bothering you is whether or not his clothes are going to fit.

Gently, Natasha eases your hand off her wrist. “I’ll be right back,” she says quietly, and then she’s out the door before you can stop her. You’re left alone, wet and cold, standing naked in the middle of a public bathroom, in some conference hall Tony’s rented out, your stomach burned by your own doing.

And now you’ll have to find some way to jam yourself into Thor’s gym shirt and sweats.

God, could this fucking day get any worse?

You finish drying yourself off to the best ability, skin still stinging. By the time you’re throwing the last of the paper towels away, your hands are shaking and your mind is conjuring the most absurd images it can think of.

Natasha watching you change into Thor’s clothing, unable to fit. Ripping Thor’s shirt by the seams. Needing someone to drive all the way to the Tower to get you something to wear because you couldn’t shimmy Thor’s pants up your thighs.

Dropping your hands to the sink counter, you breathe in and out, your forehead resting against the cool marble top. You force yourself to relax, but every coping skill you’ve read in the self-help books lining the store shelves is suddenly missing from your head.

Thor’s a six-foot-and-then-some God with shoulders broader than your body could ever hope to be, muscles buffed up from whatever Asgardians huff to get beefy.

You can fit into his clothes—right?

None of this would have happened if you just barred Morse Code Media from attending this stupid press conference. Natasha was right, as she always is. They guilted you and you took the bait, and you allowed them to come with the mutual understanding that they wouldn’t use flash because, as you so generously educated them, it could trigger Loki—or anyone up on that stage, really—in ways the general public could never imagine.

You could imagine. You do imagine. It’s why you instituted the policy in the first place.

And _Loki_ , god. You saw it. The blinking, the twitch of his hands, the subtle movement in his shoulders after the flash went off. You saw it all, and now, replaying the memory in your head, your stomach rolls.

Even if the man hates you, and even if he’s a miserable asshole, he doesn’t deserve to suffer just because of your own mistake.

As you hunch over the counter, clenching your eyes shut, you press your palm to your stomach, hissing at the pain, the raw feeling of your skin. If you aren’t careful, you can feel pinpricks of tears at the back of your eyes, threatening to surface.

You trusted someone with a second chance and got burned—literally.

The irony of it all is that Loki is the one who needs a second chance.

That breaks the last of your strength. Tears drip onto the marble counter, splashing against your hands where they grip the edge. A wet laugh bubbles up your throat. Are you really crying, naked, in the middle of a bathroom? Because you’re sad about the nightmare dressed in green armor outside?

Yes, you are. You’re sad for him. You’re sad that he won’t let anyone give him a second chance.

You’re sad for yourself, too. You’re sad that your dress is ruined and you’ve had another “fat crisis” and now you’re going to have to wear Thor’s clothes. And you’re embarrassed. _God_ , you’re embarrassed. The press conference was a complete failure thanks to your inability to be anything more than a stupid little girl who lets everybody walk all over her. And now Loki’s going to be extra asshole-ish to you, all mean and snapping, because of it.

Stupid Loki Odinson. Stupid shitty photographer. Stupid.

You’re so stupid.

And now your mascara is running, you realize, looking up into the mirror. Black is streaking down your cheeks and you wipe it away, only causing it to smear. The pity party is officially over, you decide, grabbing another set of paper towels to start getting the mascara off your face.

Just as the last of it rubs off, someone bursts through the door and you jump to cover what parts of your body you can, but it’s just Natasha. She’s got Thor’s gym bag in one hand and a plastic ziplock in another, empty.

“Here,” she says, handing you the gray sports bag, eyes trained on your damp red face. “You alright?”

You give her a nod. “Thanks, Nattie.”

As you fish for Thor’s change of clothes, Natasha gives your dress another good wringing, trying to get as much water out of the fabric as possible. She wraps your ruined lingerie in a towel you wish existed ten minutes ago when you were drying yourself with paper towels and stuffs it, along with your dress, into the plastic bag.

Meanwhile, you’re panicking about Thor’s clothes again. Until, of course, you slip the soft gray shirt on, already a little stretched out to accommodate Thor’s massive size, and it falls over your shoulders and down your stomach easily. The fabric grazes the burn and you wince.

But it fits, and Natasha isn’t even looking at you. Take that, brain.

The sweatpants are next, and though you have to shimmy a little to get them over your ass, once they’re on, the waist gaps almost comically. And the length—jesus. You pull them up and start to fold the waistband over, trying to eliminate the amount of hem that’s piling up on the floor.

Natasha snorts when she turns around to see your dilemma.

“C’mere, _Zaika_.” She beckons you over, then crouches to help you fix the sweats.

“Thor’s a beast,” you say as she tries rolling up the hem to your ankles, but it flops back down.

“You’re just small,” she says.

“We’re the same height,” you snark back.

“I have an inch on you.”

Somehow, Natasha is able to gather the extra fabric up and tie it into knots sitting just above your ankles, but the resulting image makes you laugh so hard it hurts. You kind of look like a little kid trying to wear pants made for an adult, and the big knots at the side just seem like an obnoxious fashion statement.

“Do you have my heels?” you ask her, zipping Thor’s gym bag up once your clothes are inside.

“Here.” She hands you a pair of snakeskin flats—the flats she was wearing earlier. Now, she’s wearing your heels instead, and man, she’s killing it with ‘em. You’re a little upset they look better on her than they do on you.

“You sure?” There’s a little space in the flats when you slip them on. Your heels are probably pinching her toes.

“You’d look ridiculous,” she simply replies, and you have to agree.

Finally, the bathroom saga comes to an end, and the two of you shuffle out of the ladies room and back into the conference center’s lobby, Thor’s bag hanging off your shoulder. Everyone has cleared out it seems, your friends the only ones still standing around talking among themselves.

Steve is the first to see you, raising a hand in the air to get your attention as if the building isn’t devoid of people. Loki, however, is the first of the group to turn to you.

And boy, his face is really pretty when he isn’t pissy.

It’s like you’re seeing him for the first time, which _wow_ , sounds so cliche when you mull it over, but it’s true. When he’s not scowling, his face drawn up all tight and guarded, you understand why he’s considered a God.

The planes of his face are smooth, his jaw cut on a sharp angle, and his cheekbones beautiful. Now that he isn’t frowning, you can see his lips are thin, pressed together in a sort of look you haven’t seen before, but they fit perfectly with his refined Grecian nose. But his eyes, oh his eyes, goodness. You’ve never seen them in such a clear light, and they are beautiful.

They are blue and beautiful, icy and hardened, and he looks at you like he’s concerned.

But then he turns away and Thor is bounding into your view, throwing his arms around you and hugging you to his body. The burn beneath your clothes screams in protest, but you manage to bite your tongue.

“My lady, are you alright?” Thor pulls you away just enough to look down at you, and his face is all worried and scared and upset. Not like Loki, right? Loki could never be concerned about anyone but himself, and much less you.

You blink, looking up at Thor. “Yeah,” you say, patting his arm so he’ll let go of you. “Thanks for letting me borrow your clothes.”

At this, he flashes you a grin. “And you look wonderful in them!”

“Chill, you big Golden Retriever. I look like I’m a kid playing dress up because you’re so damn tall.”

Thor takes his bag from you as Tony sidles up, tucking his sunglasses into the pocket of his suit.

“You okay, angel? I took down that asshole's information in case you want to press charges, but his company is ixnayed. Blacklisted ‘till the end of time.”

“Press charges?” You roll your eyes. “He dumped coffee on me. You’re acting like he murdered my family.”

Tony frowns. “He burned my best assistant.”

“I’m your only assistant,” you retort. “Wait. I’m not your fucking assistant, Tony, I’m—

“Whatever, you don’t want to press charges, got it. But you could, and I could win you a lot of money.” He scrubs at his beard for a moment, pretending to think it over, then blanches. “On second thought, nevermind. You’ll leave me if you have money.”

“I think _Zaika_ probably wants to get home, don’t you think?” Natasha’s voice breaks through. “It’s been a long day and it’s only—” she looks down at her watch, “—noon. So can we get out of here?”

“Yep,” Steve says. “The cars are out front.”

Thor offers you his arm as always, the perfect picture of a king, and you let him escort you out of the conference hall. You pass by Loki, who is staring at you with a strange, indiscernible look, but he glances away and turns before you have a chance to say anything to him.

You never found out if he forgave you or not.

* * *

“Hey!” Wanda bats Sam’s hand away from the TV remote he’s been inching toward. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

“You can change it,” you say to Sam, who whips his head around to look at you with his big, pleading eyes. With a stretch, you start shifting to get up. “I need to drop these off at my office anyway.” You shake the packet of paperwork at him.

“C’mon sugar, don’t leave,” Sam says, reaching for your wrist, but you shrug him off. “I’ll let you watch whatever you want!”

“Wanda’s just trying to con me into staying for movie night later, even though she knows I really need to get this work done.” You shoot her a glare, but she pretends not to notice.

Sam looks pleased at this, lips splitting to reveal a toothy grin. “You should! You haven’t hung out with us in a while, and now the beefy blonde and his brooding brother stink up the place. Besides,” he throws an arm over your shoulders, pulling you closer to him on the couch, “I’m starting to think you like Barnes better than me.”

That strikes a nerve. A flush begins to spread through your face, and when you see Wanda smirking from your peripherals, you huff and toss your paperwork onto the coffee table in surrender.

“Well you don’t see Bucky trying to change my channels, do you? He, _unlike you_ , is cultured enough to enjoy Parks and Rec.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s whipped,” Sam murmurs under his breath and you smack his chest. “C’mon, girl, we need to pick out some movies. I’ll let you have first dibs, and then I’ll even drop off your paperwork _for_ you.”

How could you refuse that? Between Wanda’s earlier begging for you to take a night off, and now with Sam’s insistence too, you find yourself stuck. On one hand, you really do want to relax after the shitty day you’ve had, and you’ve hardly gotten to spend any time with your friends recently.

On the other hand, you don’t really belong with the Avengers anyway, and you shouldn’t be hanging out with them. You just work for them—nothing more than that.

If Bucky were here, instead of on his stupid solo mission halfway around the world, he’d just pull you into his lap and lock his arms around you, anchoring you to him. He’d say, _c’mon doll, take a break with me, who's gonna hold my hand during the scary parts_? And you’d say, _Bucky, we’re watching a romance, there aren’t any scary parts_.

You let out a sigh, dropping your chin into your palm, propping your head up as your eyes move back and forth between Sam and Wanda, who wait patiently for your reply.

“Oh alright,” you grumble. Wanda claps her hands together.

“Perfect!” She swipes the TV remote from the coffee table. “Sam, why don’t you take her paperwork up and we’ll start looking.”

“You better throw an action movie in there,” he warns, standing from the couch and letting you drop back against the cushions, grabbing your packet of work in his hand. “Like a Die Hard or something.”

“We watched Die Hard last week,” she reminds him.

“Fine. Mad Max, then. The good one.”

Wanda rolls her eyes, gesturing with the remote as if to shoo him off. Sam shoots you a two-fingered salute and follows her directive, and almost like magic, he’s switched places with Natasha who passes by him on her way into the common room.

“What are we watching?” she asks, plopping down beside you and crossing her legs gracefully.

“Dunno,” you say. “Sam wants to watch Mad Max. Why don’t you and Wanda pick some stuff out?”

Natasha shrugs. “Why don’t you? The rule is that the injured party gets to pick.” She nudges you with her elbow. “You know that.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause getting burned by a cup of coffee is like getting shot,” you snark.

“Don’t be a brat.” Natasha grabs the remote from Wanda and tosses it at you. It smacks against your thick thigh. “I know you’ve been wanting to see the John Wick movies.”

You groan. “How do you know that?”

“I’m a spy.”

“I want to see them too!” Wanda pipes up and you shoot her a glare.

“Oh really?” you say, narrowing your brows. “You, the queen of the chick flicks, want to watch the John Wick trilogy?”

“What?” Wanda shrugs. “Keanu Reeves is hot.”

“It’s settled.” Natasha rips the TV remote away from you before you have a chance to reply. “John Wick it is, ladies.”

“We’re watching John Wick? Buck’ll be pissed.” Steve walks into the room, resting a hand on the back of the couch where you and Natasha sit. “He really wanted to watch them.”

“Shut up, Rogers.” Natasha queues the movie anyway. “Barnes can catch up when he gets back. Maybe he’ll work faster next time he’s solo.”

Your gaze drops to your hands where they’re folded in your lap. Bucky wanted to watch the John Wick films? Why hadn’t he told you? The two of you could’ve watched them together. A part of you wants to take it back, to wait until he gets home to put them on when the night grows long and neither of you can sleep in your own beds, but you know Natasha won’t back down.

She always sees right through you. She’ll know.

Instead, you stand up. “Here, Steve, take a seat. I’m going to go make snacks for everyone.”

He shakes his head. “I’ll help you out, sweetheart. You’re always doing everything for everybody, even when you’re taking the night off.”

You shoot him your Signature Smile. “It’s what I do best.”

The blond super soldier follows behind you into the kitchen as you start to amass food and drinks. Natasha won’t eat unless you sneak her some chocolate. Wanda really likes caramel popcorn. Steve’s already getting some beers out of the fridge to share with Sam, and they’ll pick at everyone else’s food as the night moves on. You know Tony and Bruce are working late, so they won’t be joining.

Besides Bucky, it only leaves Thor. Thor and Loki. You wonder, vaguely, if the two will show up, and without thinking, your hands move of their own accord and begin rustling up Pop-Tarts from Thor’s big stash in the pantry.

But what would Loki like, if anything? He hates Midgardian food. And he’s probably too stuffy—no, too nervous—to eat so casually in front of everyone. He kind of seems like the type to indulge in sweets though, when no one is watching.

You grab some of the shortbread cookies you keep hidden behind the bags of rice in the pantry, the ones that go well with tea. Or also on their own, when it’s three in the morning and you haven’t eaten a real meal yet, but you desperately need something sweet, but not so sweet it sends you into shock.

Loki isn’t going to come to movie night anyway, so you easily convince yourself you’re grabbing them for yourself.

“I’ll be right back for the rest,” Steve says, shooting you a smile, leaving you alone in the kitchen to grab the rest of the drinks. Cookies tucked under your arm and Pop-Tarts in another, you’re bending down to search for another popcorn bowl when familiar footsteps pound loudly through down the hallway, and your head pops up instantly, grin already working its way onto your face.

“Thor!” you call out to him, catching his attention. His whole body seems to perk up when he sees you, if that’s even possible. And when you wave the fistful of foil wrappers in the air at him, well, you’ve never seen a man so fucking happy before. Like a dog, he trots over to you in a hurry, and you think he’s reaching for the Pop-Tarts, but instead, he picks you up into his arms to give you a thorough spin.

And it would be okay except for the searing pain that prickles through your skin when he smashes you to his chest, reminding you of the burn that’s covering the front of your body. You blink back reflexive tears, and in doing so, you spot _him_.

In the shadows of the hallway, just as he was the day you first met, Loki leans against the wall, watching you with his glacier eyes.

“Thor,” you whine, “put me down, please.”

When he doesn’t, you take a fist and beat it against his back, your usual sign of annoyance, and he drops you back down. At first, the relief is immense. And then, like a solar flare, the singe of a new heat covers your skin and you wince involuntarily. You hadn’t realized how bad the burn really did hurt until now.

“Are you alright, my lady?” Thor looks down at you, eyes roaming your figure, a little bit wide and pleading as if he’s afraid he’s made you angry, but you pat his chest reassuringly.

“You doing movie night with us?”

“Yes!” He beams at this. “I am so glad you are joining us. I hoped you would relax after the busy day you’ve suffered.”

You make a point to lean around him, peering at Loki. “Are you joining us too, Your Highness?”

His jaw locks. Then, he strides into the light, his wavy locks pushed to one side of his head, falling over his shoulder. He’s dressed more casually than you’ve ever seen him before—a green long-sleeved shirt and a pair of constricting black jeans. You think you see a pair of black boots peeking out of the hem.

“Unfortunately,” he hisses, but it sounds flatter than his usual irritated tone.

“Great,” you say. “We’re watching some action films tonight. Here, for you,” you press the five packets of Pop-Tarts into Thor’s awaiting hands, “and these are for you.”

As you walk toward him, Loki looks as if he’s about to bolt. He’s all tense, drawn up into himself, brows drawn in either anger or confusion or something guarded. But you simply approach and hold the box of your shortbread out to him, a little Mona Lisa smile playing at your mouth.

He blinks and then raises a brow at you. “Why would I want those?”

You shrug. “I like them. I doubt you have a Midgardian movie snack. Try ‘em at least.” You give the package a shake at him, gesturing for him to take them. For a long moment, Loki doesn’t move, and neither do you.

Then, like a wary dog who's been abused by too many hands, Loki’s hand slowly moves toward the package, until he snatches it from your grasp. He feigns reading the words and you can’t help that your lips curl upwards into a satisfied grin.

“Alright boys, movie time awaits.” You wave your hand at them toward the living room.

“Indeed so, my lady!” Thor sweeps his arm around you again, pulling you into his side as he’d usually do to escort you around the Tower, but the movement makes another shudder of pain roll through you. It’s like every time Thor manhandles you, your skin pulls just enough to irritate the burn.

Immediately, you pull away, and when you look up, there’s a flash of hurt in his eyes.

“Sorry,” you say quickly. “I have to run to the restroom. Can you get the rest of the drinks? And save me a seat.”

You flee the room in a matter of seconds, leaving no room for Thor, or even Loki, to say anything. As soon as you duck into the nearest bathroom and have the door locked behind you, you rip your shirt up toward your neck and look in the mirror.

If possible, the burns running down your body have become even more red. You touch your stomach and hiss, just as you did when the skin was fresh and hot, and while the pain doesn’t feel as raw, god does it hurt.

It’s like the fabric rubbing over it has made it worse, because when you pull the band of your sweatpants away from your waist, it’s angry and it hurts to even breathe, the movement too much. How did you not notice until now?

Oh, that’s right—you have the pain tolerance of an Avenger. Or that’s what Tony said the last time he was stitching you up in the cool air of his lab, where you didn’t even cry, and the next day Pepper was calling you with a job offer.

But a burn? It was just coffee, nothing serious. How the hell could it hurt so bad?

You wince as you let the waistband snap back uncomfortably on your skin, chafing the raw injury. When it’s back in place, you sigh in relief. All you have to do is make it through movie night without anyone noticing. Easy peasy. Then you look up and you almost scream.

Behind you, in the mirror, is Loki.

You whirl around, hands grasping the sink to ground yourself. He’s glaring at you, or more specifically, he’s glaring at your body, and something stupid worms its way into your brain and you raise a hand to slap him.

He catches your wrist. Your eyes widen impossibly.

“Stupid girl,” he spits out, and you wonder if kneeing him in the Asgardian jewels will do anything. You contemplate that for a moment too long, because Loki is grabbing the hem of your shirt and pulling it up just enough until it reveals the burn across your stomach, and it ignites something feral in you.

“What the fuck are you doing?” You fight against him. It all moves a little too fast. Suddenly, he’s got both your wrists in one hand.

“Be quiet,” he says as if he’s not about to—what—what the fuck is he going to do to you? Your breaths begin coming in too short, too fast, too close together as panic sets in. “You’re more injured than you let on.”

“What the— _What the fucking fuck_?”

“Don’t worry, girl. Your body doesn’t tempt me.”

He sounds like he’s amused, and you’re about to kick his ass, scream for Thor, scream for anybody to come fucking save you from this fucking monster that you were going to give another chance to—

And then Loki’s hand, cool like rushing water, falls upon the burn underneath your shirt. You shriek, and you don’t know if it’s from the shock or the cold or the pain that ignites in the burn. A warmth begins to flow over your skin, like a chill creeping in, but you’re basking in the sunlight, and everything is so beautiful for a split second because the red marring your body is encased in a golden glow.

It tingles, and you watch in awe as Loki’s hand shimmers against your skin, and it’s over too quickly and he’s pulling away. He fixes your clothes at a rapid pace as your mouth hangs open, in stupor, and he looks you in the eye before he disappears in a blink from the bathroom.

You wonder if any of it even happened, he’s gone so quick. Haggard breathing, the quick rise and fall of your chest, it’s the only thing in the room.

With a shaking hand, you draw up the hem of your shirt, peeking beneath the fabric. Your skin is back to its usual color, all marks from the burn gone. When you touch it, no pain surfaces. Loki healed you.

You slide down until you’re sitting with your back at the wall, your head in your hands. This time, you’re sure of it.

His eyes were concerned. Regretful. Guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And a HUGE THANK YOU for 100 kudos on this story and nearly 200 followers on Tumblr! 💖 Your support keeps me going! Updates weekly on Saturday. Come say hi and request some drabbles at @divine-mistake on tumblr!


	5. Chapter 5

The rules had been made clear to him—not once, not twice, but four times, all on different occasions. Thor told him once, before they left for Midgard. When they arrived, Stark went over them again. After he was settled in his room, and perhaps just after that woman came to his door and had yelled at him, Thor reminded him.

Then he yelled at her again and she hadn’t even yelled back and Rogers, for Norns’ sake, outlined the rules as if he had forgotten them.

In all fairness, Loki didn’t act like he knew them. In fact, he rather acted as if he’d never heard them before, and that’s probably why he was always being reprimanded about it, just as he was when he was a child. Loki knows the rules. He isn’t dull. He, however, prefers to play by his own rules rather than the ones put strictly in place by his wardens, the ones that keep him imprisoned in a glass tower similar to that of a fairytale. He only agreed to these rules in order to keep his seidr.

But now, Loki wonders if he really did know the rules, because he’s broken over half of them in one fell swoop, and it’s not that he’s worried about the fact that he’s broken them, but the fact that he feels— 

Norns, what is this feeling?

The rules are simple, or simple enough, really.

_Do not hurt any Midgardian in any capacity, for any reason. Do not betray the trust of the Avengers. Do not scheme with any other party in order to hurt the Midgardians. Do not hurt the Midgardians, with or without magic_.

So what had he done?

Under the pressure of his grip, the marble countertop in his bathroom crumbles in his fingers like chalk, falling to the floor between his feet. Loki looks up, into the mirror, at his own reflection. In this lighting, or maybe it's just his imagination, his eyes look faintly green. It is just his imagination, right? If he stares long enough, he can see the threads of red in his sclera, veins spider webbing out from his hollowed sockets.

He blinks. His eyes are still blue, but they are still tortured, too.

He hurt her. In the common room’s bathroom, where she’d ducked away, trying to hide her pain from her friends. From his brother. He hurt her there.

It wasn’t like she was hiding it very well. In fact, Loki’s unsure of how the others didn’t notice it before he did. The way she would wince, how carefully she moved her body, the heat rolling off her skin. Was he truly the first to notice? Or was it just that they did not care?

He knows, of course, that can’t be the answer. That woman is loved in this Tower, adored, cherished. By his brother, even.

Loki shakes out his hands, dust from the crushed counter falling out like falling drops of rain and splattering the ground. When he glances down, there are fine creases in his palms, reddened now, from the destruction and rumble he stands among in his en suite.

It wasn’t that he intended to break the rules. But the thought of that burn which marred her body, how she was curved in pain, how she flinched from the hurt but didn’t flinch from his sudden arrival, only gasped in surprise, it all made him so angry in the moment.

But more than that, perhaps a notion he doesn’t want to admit, is that he wasn’t—he isn’t—angry at her. He is angry at that Midgardian man who went against her wishes. He is angry that the flash even affected him, Loki of Asgard, heir to a frozen throne he doesn’t even want, tortured by the Mad Titan, that he was caught falling prey to the silly idea that bright flashes could cause one to relive their darkness moments.

He is angry that she was right, and he is angrier that she was burned because of his own failings.

Ah. It’s clear now. This feeling is guilt.

Something crunches beneath his boot—part of the marbled counter he’s broken now crushed underfoot. Loki kicks at the rubble. What will Stark say when he realizes Loki has destroyed it? Will they even replace it for him, or is that not a luxury prisoners are afforded? With a wave of his hand, he clears the dust from the floor and sends it away, leaving the sharp edges of the counter for another day.

He can’t stand to look in the mirror any longer and flips the light off on his way out.

“... _these are for you_.”

When she offered him that package, she feigned nonchalance, but there was something in her eyes Loki didn’t care for. As if she truly hoped he’d take them from her. As if she truly thought he would enjoy them.

He was never offered many things. When Thor and his friends would sneak off beyond the palace walls to play, Loki was never invited. His brother was always chosen first for anything, too, like the hunt he journeyed with Odin, citing the cause that Loki was too young. He and Thor were not even five centuries apart! Why could he not be included?

And Mjölnir— _that_ was a sore spot.

But that woman offered him something so simple after he had treated her so wrongly. At every turn, he’d yelled at her, threatened her, belittled her. At his press conference, she’d be attacked, and while Loki tried not to feel responsible, there was something that made his stomach rot and fester and twist and sicken when he watched the Midgardian photographer spill that boiling beverage on her. Her face became something so different than he’d seen before.

She looked, in that moment, terrified. Agonized. And he felt _responsible_ for it.

Maybe that was what made him follow her into the bathroom, the feeling of responsibility that surfaced when he saw how much his oaf of a brother pained her just by embracing her, the gut-wrenching, mouth cloying, bothersome feeling that arose within him the same way it had when he caught her gaze at the conference center.

Loki never intended to hurt her. Truly. He meant to knock on the door, proceed to enter when she allowed, and to offer his healing abilities to her under the guise of such a responsibility. It was meant to be an apology. Loki wanted to _apologize_.

And what had he done instead?

He falls to his bed, lying among the sheets, palms clutching his face and covering his eyes. The scene is clear in his head when he replays it, a memory on loop, the first time she ever looked at him with true panic in her eyes.

“ _What the fuck are you doing_?”

When his foolish silver tongue failed him, Loki insulted her, ripped her clothes from her body to touch her, and healed her without permission. _That_ was his apology.

Loki violated her. He’s no more than a villain now, back to being evil once again. Breaking the rules so carefully set in place. She’ll surely tell his brother, as she rightfully should. They’ll imprison him, if he’s lucky. If he’s not so lucky, the rest of the Avengers will tear him to shreds out of their love for her. As they should.

He is many things, but more than anything, he is a monster.

Loki raises his hand against the ceiling and watches his skin shift to the chilling blue he’s feared most of his life, ridges and markings running up the length of his arm like outlining his muscle structure.

At least he’ll never have to reveal his true form to her—she’ll be scared enough as is.

* * *

“I thought I’d find you here, Your Highness.”

The book in his hand snaps shut with a loud thump at her voice and Loki’s head swivels to meet her eyes. She’s standing in the entranceway to the little alcove he discovered in the library not too long ago, dressed in loose-fitting clothes rather than her normal business attire. A cream-colored blouse with a navy ribbon tied at the collar, its color matching the long, flowy skirt she’s paired with her outfit. With gold jewelry that jangles loudly at every subtle movement she makes, Loki’s jaw tightens and he looks away.

Not before he sees the soft smile spread across her painted lips. How could she still look at him that way?

He doesn’t respond, so she walks into the room and grabs a book off the top of the pile he’s collected on the glass coffee table. This small alcove in the library has been his chosen spot for the last two weeks. No one walks through, the couches are soft and comfortable, and there’s a window between two bookshelves that lets just enough natural light in for him to read through most of the hours of the day.

It’s the only reason he comes out of his room besides to train and to eat, and even then, he never stays long and steers clear of the others, especially her.

But now she’s here, eyes scanning the title, and Loki just wants to flee.

“ _Ecce Homo_ ,” she reads, then tosses it back onto the pile. “He went mad in the end, you know. Syphilis, like most of the other white men in the eighteen-hundreds.”

“Indeed,” he says quietly, “but Nietzsche died of a stroke after contracting pneumonia. The syphilis only served to drive him to madness, not kill him.” Loki’s ankle rests over his knee, his chin held tightly in his palm, as he stares out the window trying not to glance over at the woman.

“I didn’t realize Nietzche was required reading for Asgardians,” she snickers. “Or is that just your thing, Your Highness?”

A muscle in his jaw jumps and twitches as he grinds his teeth.

She moves further into his little sitting room, the flounce and flow of her dark skirt like water around her legs, and she settles into one of the overstuffed red velvet chairs across the table from him. As she glances around the room, her eyes roaming over the tall bookshelves that reach the ceiling, she hums beneath her breath something unrecognizable and Loki thinks he might should place his hand around her throat to remind her who he is.

Because she does not seem scared of him, and by the Gods, she should be.

“Thor told me you’ve been more reclusive than normal,” she tells him, and Loki’s head whips to face her. “His words, not mine.”

“That oaf knows nothing,” he chooses to say, swallowing back the biting venom that comes so quickly to mind.

She shrugs. “I don’t know about that. I haven’t seen you around the Tower in a couple of weeks, either.”

“Does it matter to the likes of you?” he sneers at her.

“Of course.”

Loki looks at her—more than he’s looked at her before now. The light that floods the room from the center window highlights her eyes, and he wonders what name he would give their color. She threads her fingers through her hair to brush it back from her face, gold bracelets clinking together, and she tucks some of it behind her ear as she so often does. When her gaze falls upon him, Loki seizes up, holds her stare for less than two seconds, and then cuts his eyes back to the window.

“I’m surprised you haven’t run out of things to read in here yet,” she says as she begins to sift through his pile again, soft thumps of books hitting the glass top of the table as she creates a new stack. “I peg you as the type to get through about thirty books in one sitting,” she jokes.

His eyes narrow at her now that she isn’t looking at him any longer. “It isn’t like I have the option for more,” he grits through clenched teeth. “I am chained to this forsaken Tower. This insignificant place offers nothing in comparison to what the library of Asgard contains, but it will have to make do.”

Loki watches as she re-stacks the books she’s gone through, placing them back in the same order he kept them piled in. She does it thoughtfully, making sure the spines line up in order to keep their balance so they don’t topple over. When she’s done, the tips of her fingers run over _Ecce Homo_ ’s leather cover, tracing the artistic engravings that swirl along the silver letters. The rings she wears on her fingers are gold as well, some with small gems that sparkle in the light of day. The lacquer on her nails here is a professional nude, so unlike the bright pink he knows hides within the delicate flat shoes she’s wearing.

“Well I hoped you’d say something like that,” she says, her lips splitting into an easy smile he’s seen her bare with the other Avengers. “Wanna go run some errands with me today?”

Loki hopes she doesn’t notice how wide his eyes go before he has a chance to breathe in deep, controlling the stoic countenance he’s trying to keep.

“Beg your pardon?”

She laughs, tossing her head to the side just a little, like she’s pleased with herself. Something inside him—something guilty, maybe—tightens like a fist around his stomach and he wonders why he always has to be so sharp with her.

Because he hates her. And she hates him, after all he’s done, doesn’t she?

“Never had to run errands before, have you, Your Highness?” She leans toward him, elbows propped up on her knees, hands cradling her face as she looks at him. “That’s okay—I’ll go easy on you. What d’ya say?”

He raises a brow. “You do realize I’m not allowed out of here, correct?”

She flashes him that brilliant smile, white teeth and all. “Lucky for you, I’ve got connections. Specifically Tony, who owed me a favor, and now you’re free to spend the afternoon with me as long as you swear to behave.”

The fist clenching his insides tightens and Loki can’t breathe. There are a thousand things he wants to say to her, and many of them are not kind in any regard. He wants to snap at her, to threaten to watch the life fade out of her eyes as she kneels at his feet and begs for salvation. He wants to take her face in the palm of his hand and ask her why she would ever extend him such a kindness.

He wants to know why she cashed in a favor owed to her by Tony Stark to spend on him, a villain who violated her and didn’t even apologize after he had done so, and even as she sits in front of him now, looking at him with a sort of softness that leaves her vulnerable, she doesn’t demand something from him in return.

Loki wants to apologize, but he swallows them back like viscous venom on his tongue.

“And I assume you think you can make me behave?” he asks her, but it doesn’t sound as sharp or as menacing as he hopes it to be. He can’t even make it _charming_.

“Oh,” she says, grin widening, “you don’t think I can? I thought you were smarter than that. Not even you would be so stupid as to look a gift horse in the mouth, would you, Your Highness?”

His brow furrows. “A gift horse?”

“Sorry,” she says, so quickly, so enviably easy with the phrase. “I forgot you aren’t from here for a second. It’s an expression that means like, you shouldn’t be ungrateful for a gift that you’ve received from someone.”

“You Midgardians are so—”

She cuts him off with a groan and Loki almost hisses. “You’re no fun, I swear. I have all these great lines and comebacks and you probably wouldn’t understand any of them. We really need to get you caught up on idioms. Anyway.”

Like that, she jumps to her feet, hands smoothing out the liquid layers of her long skirt. While she’s looking down, she wobbles just a little, and instinctively Loki shoots to his feet to grab her, but she’s already catching herself with a quiet giggle before he can even take a step toward her.

She looks at him, her eyes shining with mirth, and he very quickly looks away, pulling at the green sweater he’s taken to wearing around the Tower as if to act like he was only standing to join her.

“So you ready to blow this joint? Or do you need me to explain that one, too?”

“Let’s go,” he snaps at her, and she laughs again.

* * *

He expects resistance. He expects his brother to be waiting at the door, ready to lecture him on treating “the fair lady Rabbit” with the utmost respect and chivalry. Or some combination of Romanoff, Rogers, and Stark to threaten him with expulsion and death on the off chance he were to break the rules—again, surely, since she told them what he had done already—but no one showed up. The woman simply spoke to the AI of the building, flashed some ID at the security guards down by the doors, and they were in the garage and headed toward a sleek black car.

Had she indeed told the others about what he did to her? Had they still agreed to let him accompany her out of the Tower?

And Norns, Loki is still confused as to why she would even offer this in the first place.

“Be careful with the car,” the woman tells him as she unlocks the vehicle. “She isn’t one of Tony’s—this beauty’s all mine.” And then she ducks inside, grabs a pair of round sunglasses that sit too big on her tiny nose, and buckles in.

Loki follows, folding into the metal Midgardian contraption and clicking his seatbelt into place, but he merely crosses his arms over his chest and tries to look nonplussed about the whole thing.

“What _errands_ ,” he spits the word, “are we running, pray tell?”

She hums at this. “You’ll enjoy them, I think.”

“Enjoy them?” He squints at her as she pulls out of the parking garage, the light blinding his eyes as the environment shifts. “How could I possibly enjoy errands?”

Loki realizes this is the first time he’s been outside the Tower since the press conference and he wishes he could be anything but stoic and snippy right now, but every time he opens his mouth, he can’t help the malice that taints every word rolling off his tongue.

“Do you want to pick the music?” she asks, fiddling with a music app on her phone while stopped at a red light. “Do you even listen to Midgardian music?”

Loki grits his teeth. “What errands? I will not ask you again.”

“Chill,” she says, something he’s heard her saying too often to the others. “I’ll pick out the music, I guess. You probably want something classical, but that’s boring. Driving music should be heavy and fun and pop-y. How about some Mitski? You’re an immigrant too, technically, right? So we can jam to her.”

The woman punches something into her phone and then music starts blasting out of the stereo. She immediately turns it down, glancing over at him with a sheepish smile, and then jets off as the light they sit in front of turns green. When Loki’s eyes pass over the car’s interface, the song title reads “Washing Machine Heart” and he decides he hates it.

“Anyway,” she says, tapping her hands against the steering wheel to the beat, “these errands will be fun, I promise.”

“Oh, you promise?” he echoes, bored and petty, leaning head against his hand as he watches the skyscrapers pass by his window.

“Yup, sure do. And even if they weren’t fun, which they will be, should you be complaining about them anyway? You get to leave the Tower thanks to me, Your Highness.”

Loki wants her to stop calling him that.

“Perhaps I was wrong to think that a moment of freedom was worth suffering your presence,” he says, and it’s true. He’s still not sure why he agreed to come with her. It feels vaguely like a setup—like she’s trying to catch him in some heinous act so she can show proof that she’s extended her kindness and he’s betrayed her trust. That sounds exactly like something his brother would do, or maybe Stark would have put her up to.

He resolves to make sure he really does behave today, for fear that this is less of a friendly gesture and more of a trap. Loki is never offered anything for free, kindness included. He won’t be fooled today.

“I have a wager for you, actually.”

This piques his interest, and Loki turns to glance at her. She looks ridiculous, bouncing slightly in her seat to this Mitski music, hands dancing at the wheel, head bobbing as her oversized sunglasses threaten to slide off the bridge of her nose.

“If today ends up being the Best Day You’ve Ever Had Since Joining the Avengers—”

“Being imprisoned by the Avengers,” he corrects.

“—then you have to say one respectful, borderline _nice_ , thing to me every day.”

Loki laughs. It might be the first time he’s truly laughed since he arrived in Midgard, his head thrown back against the headrest of the seat, eyes closed in momentary humor. It’s short, but it’s real, and he finds it hard to wipe the smile away from his lips completely even after he’s back to staring out the window.

“What?” she asks, but there’s no spite in her voice. “Is that too hard for a God or a prince or whatever else you are to accomplish?”

“Hardly,” he says. “In Asgard, they called me _silvertongue_ , you know.”

It’s her turn to laugh now, hard and loud and reverberating off the leather interior, but her smile is no less wide than before. He prefers her when she’s giggling, though, softer compared to her usual sound. She giggles as if she’s keeping secrets, and Loki likes that. Would she keep his mischief a secret too?

“Then you shouldn’t be scared of this little bet,” she says. “Plus, you seem to think these errands won’t be enjoyable, so c’mon, what do you have to lose?”

“One respectful thing per day?”

“Borderline nice,” she reminds him.

“One respectful, borderline nice, comment per day,” he repeats. “Shouldn’t be hard at all.” Loki glances over at her. “I’m sure I can find something redeemable about even you.”

When they pull up to another red light, Rabbit turns to look at him, peering over the gaudy rim of her circular shades and waggling her eyebrows at him.

“We’ll see, Your Highness. We’ll see.”

Perhaps he made a mistake, he thinks, as the GPS tells them they are ten minutes from their first destination for the day.

* * *

“Mr. Mancini?” she calls as they enter a darkened shop, Loki holding the door for her at his insistence and following behind her. “Are you here? The door’s open.”

It doesn’t look like much, especially with the only light in the room flooding through the big windows facing the front of the store. The walls are black, the floor is black marble, even the counter and the couches in the waiting area are black. There’s nothing in the front room, but Loki sees a swath of black silk hanging from a doorway leading to the back.

Suddenly, someone bursts through the silk—a portly man not much taller than the woman, his arms spread out wide.

“ _Stellina_!” he calls out, approaching them. The man—Mr. Mancini—takes the woman’s face in his palms and kisses both her cheeks excitedly, then takes both her hands in his and plants big kisses there, too. “Where have you been? You haven’t come to see me in so long, _Stellina_. Did you forget about me?”

“Of course not, Mr. Mancini,” she giggles, giving his hands a squeeze. “How could I forget about you?”

He smiles at her, then peers over her shoulder at Loki, smile growing in size. “Who is this, _Stellina_? Have you finally brought me one of your boyfriends?”

Loki isn’t sure whether he wants to smirk or scoff at the assumption, and against his will, his face turns smug.

“No!” she squeaks, however, and his visage falls stoic again. “He’s a _client_. Mr. Mancini, this is Loki Odinson, our newest Avenger,” she says, gesturing to him. “And Loki,” she looks up at him, smiling, “this is Fausto Mancini, the finest tailor in New York and probably the world, and he’s going to fix you up today.”

She brought him to a tailor?

Mr. Mancini sizes him up now, eyes a little narrowed behind glasses that look a little foggy and a little too small, and Loki finds himself standing up even straighter if it's possible. With a huff, Mr. Mancini looks back to the woman.

“He’s very pretty, your boyfriend. Slim, but strong. Lean muscle. He’ll be perfect.”

She groans, but a flush covers her cheeks, and for some reason, Loki feels a thrill of pride. Perhaps it's arrogant—no, it surely is arrogant—but he’s satisfied that it flusters her when he’s referred to as such.

Not that he would ever want to be romantically involved with the likes of her.

It’s just pride. Harmless.

Loki is wrenched out of that thought when Mr. Mancini wrenches him forward by his forearm, dragging him through the silken door and toward the back room.

“Hey—” he tries to say, but the tailor talks over him.

“Italian silk, yes. And cashmere, in emerald. Yes, of course. Modeled after Armani. Armani would suit you well, son, but I am better than Armani. Vicuna wool for the winter! Expensive, expensive. Perfect for your tastes…”

Behind him, the woman laughs, covering her mouth in an attempt to stifle it. When Loki looks back at her, she seems pleased with herself.

The back room is almost as simple as the front, with the addition of a fitting platform surrounded by couches and racks exploding with clothes of different color and fabrics, all lining the walls. The woman takes a seat there, pulling her phone from her purse, but Mr. Mancini pulls Loki up onto the platform and pulls out a tape measure.

Instantly, he’s on guard, hackles raised and body stiff. He doesn’t truly know why—he’s done this so many times before now, in Asgard, where all his clothes were made to fit his body alone. But this isn’t Asgard, and Loki isn’t a prince, and all those years ago he wasn’t a monster of Jotunn blood and he hadn’t been tortured and he hadn’t been labeled a villain and—

“Mr. Mancini will take your measurements today if you let him,” her voice breaks through his mind, “and then you’ll never have to retake them again. Unless, of course, you lose or gain a few pounds here and there.”

His instinct is to snap at her, but when he looks in her direction, there’s concern in her eyes.

“I know you don’t like people touching you, but this way it’ll be over and done. Is that okay?”

How does she know that?

Loki blinks, trying to find the words he wants to say, but Mr. Mancini is standing before him and waiting, so he nods in compliance and rolls his shoulders back, forcing himself to relax. He positions himself perfectly, muscle memory from so many years ago, and allows Mr. Mancini to come closer and begin to take down his measurements.

“How has business been, Mr. Mancini?” she asks, nonchalantly scrolling through her phone.

“Good,” he replies. “Even better now that you’ve brought me another one of your men.”

She looks up, addressing Loki now. “He’s talking about the other Avengers,” she deadpans. “I don’t have one boyfriend, let alone multiple.”

Mr. Mancini glances up at him, huffing. “Crazy, right?”

Loki chooses not to answer, but it might’ve been the worse choice.

“So what do you think of _Stellina_?” he asks Loki, eyes focused on the tape measure, jotting numbers down on a tiny pad with a ballpoint pen he clips to the pocket of his dress shirt.

“Fausto,” the woman scolds. “He’s my client.”

“Sure,” Mr. Mancini mutters. “He can answer the question if he wants to, can’t you, son?”

Loki gulps. What is he supposed to say? He hardly knows her, and what he knows of her is scarce and colored by anger—her anger at him, specifically. A flash of guilt hits him like a punch to the throat, choking him, saliva thick in his mouth. Beneath him, now measuring his trim waist, Mr. Mancini stares at him and waits for an answer.

“She is adept at her job,” he settles on. “Exceedingly so.”

After all, she granted him the chance to leave the dreaded Tower, to feel fresh air on his skin again, to stretch his legs on the New York sidewalk as a visitor rather than an invader. She treated him with this kindness, a gentleness, he definitely does not deserve after the way he’s treated her, which has been sharp and cruel and, in late, downright evil. And still, she’s taken him to an upscale tailor as if she noticed his lack of Midgardian garb and is allowing him to get fitted in something that feels more suited to him, more comfortable.

He meets her eyes, which are shocked and a little bewildered, and Loki presses his lips together in what he hopes is a smile.

“Indeed!” Mr. Mancini says, cackling as he scratches something onto his little notebook. “ _Stellina_ is fantastic. It is no wonder that Mrs. Potts hired her. And, well, it’s just a shame that the young man who—”

“Hey.” 

Her voice is hard, cold, unyielding in a way he’s never heard it before. Suddenly, Loki is more curious than he’s been since he came to New York. Who is this young man that she wishes to not speak about? A past lover? A current paramour?

“Why don’t you tell Loki what his options are for today?” she suggests, then leans forward and buries her nose into her phone, effectively ending the conversation. Her eyes are narrowed, focused solely on the screen in front of her. It feels like she’s throwing up a wall—just like the day he ridiculed her at dinner.

Mr. Mancini beams at this. “Of course! I have many options for you today, young man.”

He purses his lips at this. “I am over a millenia old. I am not a young man.”

“Don’t disrespect your elders, son. Now, let’s talk suits. I think I have something suited for business casual and casual, but I want to make you a custom formal suit. Now, everyday wear, that’s a little trickier. Come to the racks with me for a moment.”

* * *

In the end, Loki only chooses three outfits from the rack that fit him perfectly enough to take home. The rest will be tailored and sent to the Tower, along with two custom pieces Mr. Mancini talked him into—a beautiful black suit and an expensive velvet suit, both of which are promised to look wonderful on his lean figure.

He walks back into the fitting room wearing his favorite ensemble of the day: an Egyptian cotton black dress shirt he leaves unbuttoned down to the third paired with slim-cut, high-waisted black trousers that show just the tops of his black leather shoes.

For the first time in a long time, he feels himself again.

But when he enters the vicinity, the woman is still looking down at her phone, typing away at the keyboard, not paying him an ounce of attention. He taps his foot for a moment, like a petulant child, and then takes to clearing his throat instead.

He isn’t sure why he wants her attention, but he blames it on the fact that _she_ dragged him here, so she should look at what he’s decided to buy. Right?

At the sound of his voice, she looks up, and he sees her phone almost slide from her grasp as her pink-painted lips form a perfect round shape in surprise.

Loki raises one slim brow at her. “Is it unsatisfactory?”

He hears her swallow. “No,” she stammers a little. “You look great. How do you feel?”

He blinks at this, not expecting such a question. How does he feel? He feels great—better than he has in years, probably.

And for once, he decides to say just that. “Great,” he mimics her. “I quite like this Midgardian wear. It is much better than the other clothes I was forced to wear.”

“I’m so glad!” she says, and Loki, truly, believes her.

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m—I _don’t_ —You didn’t have to do this for me, after everything. So thank you.”

It isn’t the perfect apology he hoped to extend to her. It isn’t even a real apology he thinks, but it’s all he can get out while he’s looking at her, and she’s looking at him, and his tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth.

But it’s like a light has flipped on in the room—like the sun has just peeked over the horizon and ended the night, the first time he’s ever seen the light of day, and it washes over him in a splay of warmth so unlike the hot irons of the Mad Titan’s torture.

Rabbit smiles, so big it must hurt her cheeks, and Loki wants to keep it forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I cannot explain how thankful I am for nearly 250 followers on tumblr and almost 150 kudos here!!! I hope you guys are enjoying! Updates weekly on Saturday. Come say hi and request some drabbles at @divine-mistake on tumblr!


	6. Chapter 6

Even if today isn’t Loki’s Best Day He’s Ever Had Since Joining the Avengers, today is turning out to be a good day.

This is probably the happiest you’ve ever seen him, which isn’t a super high bar in the first place, but it makes you feel good. Makes you feel better about yourself than you have in the last couple of weeks, ever since the press conference conundrum.

You never knew Loki could be so… not an asshole?

Maybe that isn’t the right way to phrase it. But if you’re being honest with yourself, there aren’t enough words in your vocabulary to explain the scene that’s unfolding in front of you. All you can do is watch, quietly, with an indelible smile on your face.

Loki prowls—no, it’s different than that, ‘cause if Gods could bounce, he would be bouncing—through the quaint little bookstore you’ve dragged him to, looking damnably delicious in the new threads you’ve secured him. You didn’t realize his ass looked so good until it was packed into a tight pair of pants that seemed to fit his lean body perfectly, and man, the lightweight shirt that showed a sliver of his pale chest, oh no, oh god.

He’s kinda hot.

He’s—what’s that Taylor Swift line?—a fucking nightmare dressed like the sweetest of daydreams. Or, well, a wet dream at the very least.

Not only has he been a horrible little snarky bitch about everything, but he’s pulled a knife on you, called you a handful of derogatory names, touched you without your permission, and complained about literally everything you do.

Loki snaps the book he’s been silently pouring over closed and slides it back into its place on the shelf, eyes scanning the spines. His face is focused, but not all twisted up in his usual rotten countenance, but maybe softer under the muted light of the local bookstore. When he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, he glances over at you wearing a neutral expression, but there’s a look in his icy eyes that you might think means he’s pleased.

“Next aisle,” he says, but it’s less of a command and more like a prompt, and you nod your head and follow behind him.

Sure, he’s done all that kind of shitty stuff, but he also noticed your pain and healed your burn, however clumsily he did it. And he tried to apologize for it, you’re ninety-nine-percent sure, back at the tailor. He had that same look, the one at the conference hall after you’d been burned, the one after he touched your bare skin without asking in order to heal you, the one you think looks guilty and ashamed.

It’s a start. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Loki pulls out another book to flip through, now in the philosophy section, and though he frowns at the contents he tucks it under his arm to join the other two he’s already picked out.

“Found something good?” you ask with a smile, your head tilted to read the spine. Loki barely glances at you before returning to scan the shelves.

“Good is a stretch,” he replies. “Midgardian literature hardly presents a challenge for me, much less anything new, but some of this,” he makes a broad gesture with his hands, “theory is interesting. Your small-mindedness, branded as permissive and even objective, is something that strikes me.”

You peek at the authors he’s carrying. “I wouldn’t say that Baudrillard thought his theory was end all be all, and Deridda was kind of insane but I’m pretty sure he said no one could live a fulfilling life embracing his theory, or something like that.”

Loki looks at you now, eyes squinting as his gaze roams over your face. It feels strange to have him staring at you so openly despite the bookstore being empty. Even the shelves, closed off and claustrophobic, feel private. It’s too intense and you break away from his eyes, glancing over at the row of books in front of him.

“You’re quite a reader,” he says, leaving no room for discussion.

You shrug. “I’m a poststructuralist, what can I say?”

Finally, as if accepting your answer, Loki turns back to searching the shelves. In the same silence from before, you follow behind him, simply enjoying the atmosphere of the small little shop you’ve found.

This place is the only thing you feel like you own in New York. You found Harry’s on a shitty afternoon by complete accident, but it was almost as if the shop adopted you. It was a rainy spring day, torrential, really, and your favorite gray coat had gotten soaked in the downpour when you stepped inside, dripping all over the floor. The cashier immediately grabbed you a whole armful of towels and offered to put your coat over the radiator until the storm passed, and thus, Harry’s became your secret place.

That day alone you spent five hours inside, perusing through their small collection and sitting in the easy chairs, reading through your pickings. It was warm in more ways than one—the yellowed wallpaper, highlighted by antique sconces above the wood paneling, cast the cozy little store in a fantastical glow.

It was weathered and it was beautiful.

Most places, just like Mr. Mancini’s, could never belong to you. When you find good vendors, you always give them up to the Avengers because it’s your job, it’s your duty. And it’s good for the merchants themselves—Tony Stark supporting small businesses rather than large corporations. It makes you feel good to know that you can help someone like Mr. Mancini, or the family-run catering company that always serves the Stark Galas.

But Harry’s? They would never need a place like Harry’s, so you kept it to yourself, a secret, slow-moving haven in fast-paced New York City.

So why the fuck did you bring Loki?

By the time he makes it through the philosophy aisle he’s got another three books in his grasp and you’re wishing you had something to carry them all in. Loki is nothing if not thorough and you know he’ll spend another thirty minutes looking through the rest of the shelves, though there’s only a few that’ve gone uncovered. 

Without thinking, your fingers brush over his elbow. Loki’s eyes snap to yours and you quickly draw back, remembering he doesn’t like to be touched. Although—he touched you once.

“Sorry,” you squeak. “Do you want me to hold some of those?”

His gaze flickers from you to the books in his arms, before he turns on his heel and continues stalking through the store.

“No,” he says. “I am much more capable than you.”

“Wow, alright,” you say, rolling your eyes. “I was just offering to be nice.”

Loki breezes by the very small self-help section that sits just outside the literary fiction aisle, but your eyes linger a little longer than usual. You stop in your tracks when you realize there are a few new covers, and automatically, your hand reaches out and a finger traces over the titles.

Anxiety, how to cope with anxiety, and depression. Not new topics, but you wonder if these have new coping skills you haven’t considered yet. After what happened at the press conference, you’re starting to think you might need to invest in some new material.

Of course, you’re always looking for something specific when you peruse the self-help shelf, but you never end up finding it. If only you had a little more time in your life to call that number Pepper slipped you on the back of a business card, the one you carry around in your purse for emergencies, a private, respectable, _expensive_ —

“Are you looking for something?” Loki’s voice startles you out of your thoughts and you jump away from the books immediately, a little panicked.

“No!” You fold your arms behind your back, fingers clasping your wrist a little too tightly. “The colors caught my eye,” you lie, putting on your Signature Smile.

He stares at you, for too long, and you could curse yourself right then and there.

Loki is the fucking _God of Lies_.

But he gives you a curt nod. “If you wish to buy anything, now would be the time.”

You raise your brow at him. “You’re done?”

“For now.” There are eight books in his arms now.

“Cool. The counter is just over there. I expected you to put a bigger dent in Tony’s credit card.”

Loki laughs, and just like the moment he did in the car, it’s short but it’s musical. You’re completely enchanted with it. How is it that a man so fucking infuriating—so condescending, so pissy, so fucking _damaged_ —can make a sound like that?

You brought him to Harry’s because you just—you just—you just want him to be happier and lighter and to laugh like that, for fuck’s sake.

You can’t stand the thought of anyone hating you, and you know Loki hates you.

“Did you find everything you wanted?” Emma, the cashier you’ve met a few times now, asks as she looks between you and Loki. From behind his towering figure, you smile at her, nodding your head.

“Yes, thank you,” Loki says to her and your jaw detaches from your skull and clatters to the crooked wooden floorboards beneath your feet. Or at least you’re sure it does. You want to reach into your purse and grab your compact mirror just to check.

Loki? Being grateful? To a stranger?

He glances back at you, seeing your surprise, and the corner of his lips quirk up in a haughty little smirk as if he’s reading your mind right now. Wait, is he? Can he read your mind? Does he know how much of an asshole he is right now?

You project all your _Loki is an Asshole_ thoughts as strongly as you can, just in case.

(And maybe, just maybe, you mumble it loud enough for Loki to hear you, and maybe, just maybe, you revel in the way he chuckles softly at it.)

By the time Emma is finished ringing up all of his books, totaling almost two-hundred Tony Bucks after taxes, you swipe the little black credit card as Loki gathers his two paper bags in his hands. You think he might even be the tiniest bit happy as you bid Emma goodbye and head out of Harry’s, the bell signaling your exit.

Outside, the city is just as warm as it was inside, but different. When you look up at Loki, who stands beside you taking in the sunlight, the gentle breeze of the autumn ruffling his linen shirt, you can’t help but smile.

Is it so wrong to want to crack him open like this, to destroy his barriers, to make him laugh like that all the time? Is it a crime to just want to make him happy? He deserves to be happy. He deserves to heal his wounds, and maybe you don’t have magic, but you have hands that can fix and soothe and heal in their own way—at least you think so, even though when you look down at them, all small and wrong, you know it’s not true.

“Perhaps I can accompany you when you return here,” Loki says, not looking at you.

You bite your bottom lip, trying to stop the smile from creeping onto your face.

“I’d like that,” you tell him. “Now c’mon, we’ve got one more stop.”

In this reality, you can’t heal anyone, you know. But you can at least offer him what you have—a friend, a bookstore, and a second chance or two.

And this reality, you know, is the only one that matters.

* * *

“Do you have any questions about anything?” you ask Loki, peering over your menu at him.

“Does that pertain strictly to the food options?”

You furrow your brows, narrowing your eyes at him. “I don’t know how I want to answer that.”

Loki places his menu down, choosing to instead curl his lips into a charming little smile, but you know it’s just as mischievous as it is handsome.

“Tread carefully,” he tells you.

You’re sitting in the back corner of Le Chêne de Soie, a cute little French restaurant that makes amazingly fresh gougeres you tend to gorge yourself on before even getting to your main course. Not to mention you think Loki might enjoy it, more so than he enjoys the Chinese takeout that Tony’s always getting delivered to the Tower, which Loki doesn’t seem to completely hate, but you’re sure he’s not thrilled with it.

Of course, you’d called ahead a few days ago and made a reservation for the furthest table in the back, hoping it would not only make him more comfortable being in public, but doubling as a precaution against him being recognized. Loki’s got a mug that people can see from miles away—both because he’s been on the Times Square jumbotron for trying to take over the city but also because he’s gorgeous—and you really wanted to minimize that threat as much as possible.

Didn’t stop the hostess, and subsequently the waitress, from being a little spooked until you gave them stern, but understanding, looks that clearly asked for their discretion.

“Fine,” you say, “I’ll play.”

You swear his eyes brighten at this.

“Why are you working for Stark?” he asks, taking a sip of his water, his icy eyes never leaving yours.

“That’s what you want to ask?”

“I’m curious.”

“Well first of all, I don’t work for Tony.” You snort at the thought. “I work for Pepper Potts, who desperately needed an assistant when I came on board. I worked under her for six months before she realized I was basically doing her job for her, so she promoted me, stepped away from the desk, and I moved into the Tower permanently.”

Loki nods. “Was it a job you wanted?”

“Executive manager? I mean, I didn’t really have much of a choice, but I don’t hate it. I actually love my job—it’s just a lot of work.”

“I meant working as her assistant.”

“Oh.” You frown, leaning away from the table to slouch in your seat. “I needed a job and kind of fell into the position, I guess.”

As if he senses your unwillingness to continue, Loki switches topics effortlessly. “You’re close to my brother.”

“That’s not a question,” you point out.

You see his lips twitch, trying not to smile. “You are right.”

Loki is poised to say something else, you know, but the waitress chooses this one moment to stroll over, still a little shaky, and take your orders. You use the moment to suck down your ice water, trying to make yourself look busier than you really are. Can he tell you’re uncomfortable? Probably. You would rather talk about anything else instead of what brought you to the Avengers, and you know the one subject you should _not_ be broaching is his brother, in any capacity—

“Why do they call you Rabbit? That cannot be your name, truly.” Loki’s eyes are easy when he asks, somehow. Like all the ice crystals are starting to clear, a frozen lake cracking at the edges, threatening to plunge you into its depths, and oh their depths are a really pretty color.

“Tony,” you say, laughing. “It’s Tony’s fault. He’s been calling me that since I started working under Pepper, pretty much. Said I wouldn’t stop hopping around like a rabbit, always too quick to catch. Nat was next, I think, with _zaika_. It means bunny in Russian.”

You rest your chin in your palm, looking down at the table with a fond smile on your lips. Those first days seem so far away now, back when everything was unfamiliar and you were a scared little girl, wearing ugly beige blouses and those god-awful flared pantsuits some department store salesgirl told you were more flattering on “fuller figures.”

These days you were a far cry from that scared little girl, too insecure to wear her hair in any capacity that showed the softness of her jaw or clothes which didn’t hide the round outline of her stomach.

“Do they really call you the God of Mischief?” you ask him, flicking your eyes to meet his again. “Or the God of Lies, or whatever?”

He busies himself with tapping a rhythm against his sweating glass that sounds, coincidentally, just like Mitski.

“Indeed,” he says, “although the lies part is derived from the mischief itself.” He huffs a little laugh, but it’s not like the other one, the one you find yourself searching for in Loki. “Mischief, mayhem, chaos, lies—they’re all the same in some capacity.”

His pointed look at the table cuts the discussion there, and you nod rather than reply.

You take a breath, ready to ask your next question, but Loki beats you to it. “Romanoff is close to you,” he notes, and though it doesn’t sound like a question, you know it’s a prompt.

“Yeah, we are. Natasha is like my sister, she’s my best friend. She’s always taking care of me, looking out for me like a big sister is supposed to, I guess, I mean not that I have a point of reference, since I’m an only child. But like at the conference, she’s just always there whenever I need her.” You can feel yourself beaming already at the thought of her.

Another face flashes through your mind, a pang of sadness hitting you like a heavy weight on your chest, making you sigh. You haven’t seen your other best friend in—what?—almost two months now.

“You’re close with everyone in the Tower,” he says, another statement, another question.

“I like to think so.” You chew your bottom lip. “I like to hope so, at least, but I’m sure there are some people who don't like me.”

From beneath your lashes, you look up from the table to Loki, who’s watching you with an intensity you’re not used to. It’s just like before, at the bookstore, like he’s trying to see past your skin and analyze your bone structure, to learn your blood type.

“In fact,” you say quietly, “I know for sure there’s someone who dislikes me.”

It’s slight, so slight you might’ve imagined it, but Loki clenches his jaw. His impossibly sharp cheekbones, highlighted by the shadow of the raven waves falling over his shoulder, twitch with the gesture like he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek. Maybe he knows you mean him. Surely he knows you mean him.

Before you have a chance to change the subject, the food arrives and the waitress is topping off your waters and the moment is lost to the din of the restaurant guests that surround you. It’s like you’ve forgotten where you are, and you blink, trying to remember that Loki isn’t your friend, he doesn’t want to be your friend, and he’ll never be your friend. He’s your client and you’re nothing to him. His opinion isn’t important.

You descend into silence, conversation reduced to the sound of silverware against plates. Though you try to mask it, you spend most of the time watching Loki and how he eats, studying the limited expressions he makes as he tastes the food, trying to figure out whether or not he’s enjoying himself.

It doesn’t work out that well, you realize, when the smallest smile finds his lips the next time you glance at him.

“You can ask,” he says and you flush instantly, fumbling with your fork until it clatters onto the plate. Cursing, you look around the restaurant to see if you drew attention from any prying eyes, but everyone is consumed in their own meal to notice.

“Fine,” you huff, wiping your hands on the cloth napkin in your lap. “Do you like it?”

Loki pretends to think for a moment, drawing out his answer, and you roll your eyes in response.

“I do,” he says finally. “It’s much better than that… takeout—” he says the word like it’s rotten, “—Stark is always buying. Norns, I rue the day Thor forces me to eat his packaged pastries.”

“Pop-Tarts?”

”Pop-Tarts,” he agrees with a look of disgust.

Such a simple phrase makes you laugh, spiraling into a small fit of giggles you can’t contain. The way Loki says it, with such passionate hatred, even the thought makes you unable to stop laughing. Soon, you’re sipping on your water again, trying to stifle your little chuckles, and though Loki looks positively pressed about the whole situation, there’s a warmth in his eyes that wasn’t there before.

“So you like French food, huh?”

He considers this for a minute before giving you a curt nod. “For Midgardian food, it is passing.”

In Loki language, that means he likes it.

“Good,” you say. “I’ll know where to take you back for next time. Or, ooh, I bet you’d like Greek food too. We can try that, too.”

Loki raises a brow. “Next time?”

“Well who else is gonna take you?” you ask him. “Your brother? Please. You’re better off going with me while you’re still on house arrest.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” he says, still staring at you. If there was any moment in time you wished to know what someone was thinking, it would be right here, right now. What is Loki thinking about when he looks at you like that? Like your eyes hold the answer to a question he’s unable to ask?

You call for the bill, charging it once again to Tony’s credit card happily. The waitress packs up the leftovers you have and bags it up, and Loki snatches it out of your grasp before you can take it. You’re signing your name—well, forging Tony’s signature—and getting ready to go when Loki speaks again, quietly, almost a whisper.

“For the record,” he says, eyes focused on something behind you, “I am sure you’re wrong about your assumptions.”

Then he stands from his seat and gestures for you to lead the way out of Le Chêne de Soie, leaving you no chance to even ask him what he means.

* * *

You don’t mention the little bob of his head as you listen to Nobody by Mitski on the way home. That’s something you’ll tuck away in the back of your mind—another thing you’ll keep for yourself.

You do, however, mention your bet from earlier when you pull up to the first red light you hit, giving you time to turn to him.

“So,” you say with a smile, “was today the Best Day You’ve Ever Had Since Joining And/Or Being Imprisoned by the Avengers?”

Loki doesn’t answer for a long time. You think that’s fair. It’s been a long day and he’s nothing if not proud, but there’s a part of you that’s buzzing with hope. You hope he says yes. You don’t know what you’ll do if he doesn’t say yes, honestly.

When you pass another two red lights in silence, you start formulating the erasure of your earlier words. How can you say the best was just for fun without, like, hurting said pride? Ugh, you’d really done it now, hadn’t you? Spent this whole day trying to make him happy, throwing caution to the wind, chancing it all on something with such a slim rate of success. You knew it would turn out badly. God—you should have just taken that damn spa day Tony promised you.

By the time you’re almost back to the Tower, the rays of the sun striking your eyes through the windshield, little pink sunglasses doing nothing to block the orange glow from your vision, Loki speaks.

“You are an exceptional employee,” he says lowly, watching the passing cars out the window. “Whoever dislikes you, if anyone, is a fool to turn their nose up at your kindness.”

A warmth spreads through you, similar to the warmth from Loki’s palm against your skin the night he healed you. Though you suppress your urge to look at him, in awe, you can’t help the grin that splits your lips apart. 

Not only had Loki enjoyed the day you planned for him, he had swallowed his pride and admitted that he had enjoyed it! And he even played your silly little game and complimented you—but would he really say one respectful, even nice, thing to you every day from here on out? You doubt it, but you didn’t need it. Hearing it once is enough for you.

Today was the Best Day You’ve Ever Had Since Loki Joined the Avengers, you decide.

Way better than a spa day for sure.

* * *

It’s late by the time you’re finished checking in with everyone—some young agent at the gate, then Happy, then Thor when he collected his brother, and then Tony, too. When it’s all said and done, your cute little flats were near to rubbing blisters on the sides of your toes and you shucked them off somewhere between leaving Tony’s lab and hitting the elevator.

Tony had droned on and on for so long before hitting your breaking point and you half-wonder if Loki was given the same treatment by his brother.

“You spent how much?” Tony spat Redbull all over the floor, making you grimace.

“You said you owed me.”

“Not fifteen-hundred-fucking-dollars, Rabbit. Not for Reindeer Games, ‘cause I know you didn’t buy shit-all for yourself, even though I owed _you_ , not him.”

“I bought stuff for myself,” you told him. “I bought myself dinner.”

“You’re killing me, smalls. Remind me to—I don’t know—make you take a vacation or something because I swear, you wouldn’t sleep a goddamn minute if it wasn’t for needing to take care of everyone _but_ yourself.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Oh, it’s not? Then enlighten me as to why you risked your life, civilian lives, your reputation, and more importantly, _our relationship_ , to take a God with cats for brains out on the town by yourself.”

“Fuck you, Tony.”

You had slammed the door on his last words: “Angel, wait, c’mon—”

It isn’t the first argument you’ve had with Tony and it won’t be the last. Maybe it cuts so much deeper this time because there’s a large part of you that agrees. You did risk a lot by taking Loki out today, but just as he promised, he’d be on his best behavior. Was it so wrong to want to give him a chance? A real chance.

Everyone in this goddamn Tower got chances. Everyone here’s done bad things, including you. And everyone’s gotten second chances, except for Loki, whose brother has to constantly vouch for him to get the most meager of offerings. Being locked up in a Tower, not even allowed to go on missions that aren’t vaguely suicidal, surrounded by people who hate and despise him and want nothing more than to kill him, that’s not a second chance.

Not a real one, at least, and you just wanted to give him a fucking chance.

Second chances always get you burned. Second chances always get you burned. Second chances always get you burned. The faint sensation of someone’s skin against yours, hand ghosting over your throat, blade pressing into your stomach, reminds you that second chances always get you burned.

The elevator opens just before the panic sets in and you nearly fall through the doors, clutching at your chest as if there’s no air in the room. With shaking fingers, you start to undo the silk tie around your neck, ribbon coming undone with the slightest pull and falling into your hand. You wrap it around your wrist, fingers still hooked in the heels of your flats.

You’re tired, you’re upset, and your anxiety is making a frightening return. All you wanted to do was stop by the kitchen and grab a bottle of water before heading to your room, maybe swing by your office and pick up whatever work was leftover from the other day. You never get an off day. Maybe Tony is right.

There’s a light on in the common room and you head toward it, feet bare as you pad down the hallway until you reach your destination, and when you look up, he’s there.

He’s standing in the middle of the room, a monolith in black tactical gear, knives still strapped to his body like he himself is a weapon. He’s a little roughed up, dirt smudged across his cheeks, bloodied cuts smattered over his nose and forehead, hair matted and in need of a good wash.

The grin he’s wearing takes up his whole goddamn face.

“Bucky?” His name is a faint wisp on your own lips and you’re not even sure you said it aloud.

“Hey, doll. How’s my best girl doin’?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I know you guys are probably tired of hearing this but THANK YOU FOR 300 FOLLOWERS ON TUMBLR! I could never do this series without all your support!!! Updates weekly on Saturday. Come say hi and request some drabbles at @divine-mistake on tumblr!


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